


Down The River They Flow

by Sigmu



Series: Cunning Folk AU [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Capture, Consent, Consenting Adults, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Hags, Halloween, M/M, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Mentions that Harry ran away before he got his letter, Paganism, Slice of Life, Smart Harry, Snapetober 2020, Wild Harry Potter, cunning folk, remembering the past, snarry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:53:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27274480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sigmu/pseuds/Sigmu
Summary: "The wizards of the Order sometimes say that the wilds raised him, that it was a miracle that he was alive at all. Which is funny in a not-very-amusing sort of way, magic goes where it wants, sometimes magic and science are the same thing."Harry recalls the complicated relationship he had with wizards while growing up and how it relates to his present relationship with Severus.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Series: Cunning Folk AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1991437
Comments: 23
Kudos: 176





	1. It's Quiet After the Storm

The wizards of the Order sometimes say that the wilds raised him, that it was a miracle that he was alive at all.

Which is funny in a not-very-amusing sort of way, because from Harry’s perspective the wizards are gullible near-barbarians who are much more of a danger to Harry than anything else he had ever encountered in his life. The Ministry is nothing but a cult as far as Harry can see, the way they see the world as all magical things being under their domain and what they call muggles being oblivious to magic is nothing but hogwash and lies. Like the North Korea of the magical side of the world the wizards repeat their own propaganda without stopping to really think about just how much their own reasoning doesn’t make any sense if you think about it for half a second.

Magic goes where it wants, sometimes magic and science are the same thing, and the only reason why it may _seem_ as if the world outside their little xenophobic-cult country has no magic is partly because magic in humans is born on a spectrum of different types the same way you get different eye colors or blood types and it manifests in different ways. The other part is that industrial science has been a hot fad ever since the Victorian Era and like always certain prominent church groups _really_ take issue to anybody but the priest being powerful, less of a fear of magic and more of a fear of women being beautiful but not dumb, and also that old people with their many years of life experience might be smarter than the priest.

Wizards, who still write with bird feathers, will say that those who live outside of their country only want magic only for the power (hypocritical given that every single wizard Harry has ever met desires more power), yet the fact still stands that the outside world has been able to send people to the moon and back and the wizards are so stagnant in their cult that they haven’t been able to make their own technological innovations in nearly… three? Four centuries? Everything from the one train, to the one bus, to chocolate and ice cream all came from outside of their… “ _community_ ”.

Being a witch isn’t even illegal anymore! Not since Churchill changed the law in the 1950’s!

He will agree that it was a miracle that he was alive at all, just not in the same way they were talking about.

Harry keeps his trap firmly shut about the exact whereabouts he had been and lets most of the wizards make their own assumptions. Harry himself may be begrudgingly stuck with the wankers but he’s sure as hell not going to start a full-out attack of the barbarian cult if he can help it.

Harry at first didn’t mean to make a habit out if running away from wizards, it just sort of happened on its own. He had run from his relatives just before the age of nine, was caught at eleven in February and taken to Hogwarts for a terrifying month and nearly a half before he had managed to escape yet again. This time making it a _deliberate habit_ to run from the maddened wizards and their barbaric ways, because Harry took one look at the big castle and instead of awe all he could think about was that this horror must have been what all of those Native people he read about from the New World had felt when his country invaded them and tried to drag all of their children into boarding schools to cut them off from their families and traditions. To an eleven-year-old Harry and his wild imagination Hogwarts was a combination of a prison and one of those really bad insane asylums where people died in dark corners and behind closed doors to never be seen again.

The wizards sure as hell tried to get him back, but their magic was so out of date that more often than not Harry could sit back and watch them stumble right by him like lost fools.

Save for Severus Snape of course, but then again Snape isn’t inbred out of his mind and he doesn’t get lost when surrounded by technology. He kept Harry on his toes.

Officially Harry is unimpressed about the legitimacy of their fear of this “Dark Lord” or “Volvumon” or whatever he was called, rising back up from being reduced to a smear on the floor. Secretly Harry knew a bit better but it was mostly all taken care of away from the prying eyes of wizards and Harry was not keen on giving Dumbledore an inch of satisfaction so the story of how Harry had defeated Tom Riddle for good was just going to have to stay his own little secret.

War still happened but Harry was assured that in comparison to the first this was a tiny one. This claim is something Harry always felt skeptical about, yes the killing was not as high as before, but Umbridge taking over the Ministry in response to that Bellatrix lady finding a horcrux and eating it to gain the power to control all the Death Eaters who had murdered a human as a blood sacrifice to the name of their former cult leader seemed… too convenient to have both coincidentally have happened at roughly the same time. The more Harry looked into it he found that the killing may have been far less in number but the war itself happened for a very long while within the ranks of politics and the social elite as Bellatrix the scary zealous cult follower, that probably would have ended up killing Vuvlumin herself if he had lived because not even _he_ could have satisfied her devotion to the cause, sought to seek vengeance to all of those who had failed her “lover” and had stopped fighting, and Umbridge… wore pink so people underestimated her right up until she was suddenly in charge of everything.

But that all came to a head much later, when Harry had been eighteen. The point is that around the time Harry was captured a second time Dumbledore had already lost much of Severus’s blind obedience and after the way Harry had been treated during the second capture a lot of the Order actually spoke up on Harry’s behalf. Harry had not known it at the time but the third time Harry was captured he was going to a safer place than how he had left it the first and second times.

The second time Harry was captured it took appendicitis at age thirteen to slow him down enough to be caught in March and Albus Dumbledore finally admitted that his plans for Harry were never going to work when his singular attempt at immobilizing the boy so that he would have no choice but to listen to the Head Warlock gently attempt to coax him into compliance had resulted in Harry nearly developing an obscurus as a justifiable result of being forced for days against his will in a terrifying environment while bound.

It took no time at all for Snape to find him again for a third time, it had always been Snape to find him, the man never said much to Harry, though he did try aggressively in the beginning after the first capture with many very mean words that tapered off into awkwardly concerned staring. This was due to the fact that the first capture had been so traumatizing that the man couldn’t ever get too close without Harry blacking out or going into a nervous breakdown. It hadn’t taken a genius to deduce that Harry had been pretty severely traumatized by being carelessly thrown into their world without so much as a by-your-leave, it didn’t happen often but when a child was scared stiff rather than enthralled by the wonders of Hogwarts and magic it was clear that something had gone terribly wrong.

It was with this fact in mind that Severus had taken into consideration when setting out to capture the boy for the third time.

That last time though Harry didn’t get manhandled at all.

That time Snape had sat down near the tiny hole Harry had crawled into and actually honest to god apologized.

Which normally would never have happened, Snape did not like apologizing as a rule, but it was hard for even the most bitter of men to resent Harry for his fear after it became _very_ obvious that they hadn’t exactly given Harry much reason to trust them. They were not acting like the good guys thus far in Harry’s life, and by then the Dark Lord had yet to show himself, the Mark on Severus’s arm nearly completely gone. Proving that there was no rhyme nor reason to continue treating the boy in such a villainous manner.

Severus cultivated being a bastard like an art form but that did not make him an evil unfeeling sod, he had lines that he had zero intention of crossing and aiding in the death of Lily’s son was a big fat one. Besides that, Harry had just gone through some serious surgery without anyone apparently telling why they had just cut him open and having a traumatized magical child with a very vivid imagination contemplating that was just as heartbreaking as it was dangerous (He also yelled at a few people for not telling Harry why his insides were in so much pain, which was awesome).

He felt guilty for what happened. It was an impressive feat given how determined Snape used to be to just hate Harry on the principle of being the son of a guy who was… not really much of a hero once you factored in all the stalking and bullying of others. Harry appreciated the sentiment a little later, but at the time it was too difficult to wrap his head around these evil magical monsters being at all civilized enough to be sorry.

Now… Harry felt a little weird, as if it was only now, years later that he actually had the luxury to think about it all. Hermione said it was the natural progression of trauma to finally be able to process what happened to him once he felt safe enough for his mind to do so.

Severus called it being inflicted by an inconvenient bastard overstaying it’s welcome and began interviewing discrete mind healers so that Harry could fight the bastard off and finally be done with all the terrible things that had happened.

To an untrained observer it sounded as if the older man was being dismissive, but Harry had been around to see Severus panic the first time he witnessed Harry have a flashback. The fact that he referred to Harry’s inner demons akin to a villain to be cold cocked to the middle of kingdom-come spoke volumes about how much he cared… Even if he had not a clue how to deal with Harry on top of his own guilt over the matter.

In their bed in the Headmaster’s chambers, the one they had decided to Frankenstein together from parts salvaged from the Potter estate belongings dating back to the era where owning stately looking beds was _the_ symbol of status, Severus coaxed Harry through breathing meditation to help him calm down. It was a very private thing; Severus’s voice was something beautiful that Harry could either fall asleep to or find himself painfully aroused by, and Severus liked the end results so much he often took it to their other bed at the cottage they partially lived in because Severus did not want to stay Headmaster forever and only stayed because he was waiting for Minerva to accept his begging offer that she take the position soon.

In their cottage the head of their modern bed had been pushed up against a window with a sill deep enough to be used as a seat… or a bed because sometimes Harry just needed to stare out the window while Severus observed sleepily that Harry was still a little feral despite domestic bliss.

At that Harry always grinned and crawled back into the other’s arms, but the point was that Harry’s life with the wizards was always ridiculously complicated and this was further emphasized by the fact that the events Harry remembered differed in context according to the wizards, and that always made talking about what was wrong difficult.

Because they didn’t see why he was still so traumatized about being kidnapped from what they consider to be the wild. Some tried, to give them credit they took the time to see why Harry liked the wild communities of lesser wizards and hags so damn much, and while they came back admitting that those places were very beautiful and interesting, still it paled in comparison to having a Hogwarts education.

Harry wondered what happened in wizarding history to instill such a level of boneheaded ignorance. Hermione, the Australian, stood with him in silent commiseration and theorized that they still weren’t over the days of the Empire. “Of course they don’t understand Harry, that’s the thing about colonizing societies, they have trouble making an effort to see that what they consider to be civilized society is seen to us as a fair bit barbaric. They think they are saving you rather than being incredibly rude.”

What Harry liked best about Hermione was that she too was an outsider, yet she had handy explanations to help him understand the confounding ways of wizards.

Ron was helpful in explaining things too, but he had learned to go about it carefully since his audience had the habit of rebelling against the establishment unless given a satisfying explanation as to why they really shouldn’t. Harry supposed that it would always be a little complicated, him living in three worlds at once and all.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

XXX

Severus often felt disquieted by how he and Harry could be from the same country and yet be so different when it came to magic. For Severus all magic that was not potions revolved around the wand, Harry on the other hand could take bits of twigs he found on the ground and some salt and render a surprisingly potent charm that would not fade easily.

It wasn’t… quite hag magic… certainly Severus had called it that to Harry’s face merely because he had hoped in vain that the distinction would convince the lad to take to his Hogwarts studies with equal enthusiasm, as opposed to disinterested indifference. It never worked.

It was a very old magic. Older than wands, and far older than what was found in Hogwarts’s library. Old magic mixed in with new variations that at times adapted with muggle technology in ways Severus had always assumed to be impossible and yet…

But it was still wild magic, and part of that wildness rubbed off on Harry in a way that worried Severus during the small hours of the night when the lad would perch himself by the window. Harry was always on the quiet side but in those moments it… almost felt as though if Severus blinked Harry would disappear into the night. Become part of the wilderness in the landscape the same way his magic came to the boy from the wilds of the land. It was a frightening thought.

Harry never fully assimilated into Severus’s world. In a lot of ways that was a good thing. After all the bad things that boy had suffered from the magical world it was a very good thing that Harry kept to his own wild magic instead of being crushed by the weight of an uncaring secluded state that hung all their hopes on one child being able to solve all of their problems. It was wild magic that saved Harry’s life and for that Severus was happy to encourage the boy in expanding his knowledge further.

Yet the wildness in Harry often felt like a separate entity, for there were traits the boy was completely unaware of that… did not strictly follow conventional norms when it came to wizards. Often times the scariest part was the fact that Harry was blissfully unaware of any strange magical happenings that went on around him.

For instance there was this one time when the lad had been ten years of age where Severus and a few other Order members had spotted him calmly walking along a riverbank yet when they raced forward to quietly nab him they just could not get near the child despite the fact that he was calmly walking along while they were running at full speed. Another instance was the fact that Harry just so happened to stumble into an ancient Celtic kingdom territory that had previously been thought to have been just a myth… as well as the location of the Welsh Celtic afterlife. Which was in general something worth being very alarmed about and yet the dunderhead just shrugged his shoulders and chalked it all up to some sort of natural phenomena with the land deciding to make itself unplottable save for those who knew where to look.

Arthur and Molly, who had taken Harry in as one of their own sons ( _no way in hell would they be able to convince the boy to go back to Petunia… Albus had said it was just as well since Petunia and her family had also run off shortly after Harry had bolted to freedom),_ had kept quiet about Harry’s odd quirks to the boy’s face but carefully documented each instance he did something out of the ordinary even by wizarding child standards. Though the couple are surprisingly okay with the occasional oddity since as an added benefit they gained a son who can walk on the ceiling to dust all the high up places and haven’t had a single gnome in their garden ever since Harry had reportedly given the creatures a stern talking to.

Lupin held on strongly to the theory that Harry may have inherited something from Lily’s side of the family and being exposed to unconventional magical forces in the more obscure parts of the magical world may have awoken some dormant magical traits. Much in the same way that Lily must have had magical relatives somewhere in her family tree but the magic had lain dormant for a few generations until the day Lily had been born.

Harry himself being unaware of most of the strange things he was prone to do, simply chalked it up to people making a disproportionate big deal about the whole Savior-Returns-From-Savage-Wilderness and instead of seeing Harry’s upbringing as it had been in reality, people were instead trying to bring fairytales into everything. Like usual.

The level of which Harry did not care about the wizarding world could be astonishing sometimes. To him it was _they_ who were the abnormal ones, not him. _Uncultured Barbarians_ , is a phrase Harry sometimes hisses under his breath when he’s been put into a particular mood by something particularly idiotic that happened within the Wizarding world itself. The fact that Harry didn’t always sound completely human when he grumbled never ceased raising the hairs on the back of Severus’s neck. It felt- it _sounded_ as if some ** _thing_** else was peering through Harry’s eyes and speaking through Harry’s mouth!

Severus in his quiet observations got the sense that whatever magic was afoot wasn’t always purely Harry’s. All signs indicated that it was as if the land itself were lending it’s power to the boy, a sort of prehistoric connection between man and the Earth from an era thought to have been lost to time… only to have been discovered to be practiced in isolated pockets all over the islands all along. There was no academia study nor surviving written account that hadn’t been destroyed or hidden by the Ministry centuries ago, and the current practitioners of this ancient brand of magic were not at all keen to share too much after the way they had been treated for generations.

Severus feared, in an absurd juvenile fashion, that whatever force that kept Harry tethered to the wild would call him away one day. Just like in the old stories before Rome came to the Isles. Just like in the post-Christian Arthurian tales filled with magic in a world where man could not control the nature of things, not even wizards.

There was a piece of wilderness inside of Harry. Something that could never be tamed.

What if one day it wanted Harry back?

Harry called himself one of the Cunning Folk. One of those who exist in the in-between places of the world, and are neither wizard nor muggle. Severus believed it, perhaps even in far more ways that Harry himself did, for Severus knew that Harry was more than just a silly wizard who didn’t identify as a wizard because of ridiculous identity issues having grown up in the muggle world for too long. Harry stood between the ancient past and the technological future of magic, a master of his craft in his own right.

Severus ached for Harry to embrace more of his wizarding heritage in those moments where the boy showcased his talents but then consciously hid them away again because wizards were watching and Harry did not like the way Severus’s world would stare at him in awe. If he were to embrace being a wizard Severus felt Harry would find little reason to be so shy.

When pressed Harry just gave him an odd look and quoted history at Severus as if the past proved that wizards could not be trusted even to save their own lives! Harry didn’t mind teaching Severus, nor did he mind that Severus was integrating what he learned from Harry into the school’s curriculum, but Harry said that it’s different when a wizard does it rather than whenever the Cunning Folk try to do it themselves. A cultural thing, Harry argues, because at the end of the day a wizard would rather listen to another wizard because in Severus’s culture Harry was little more than a savage grown up in the wild.

Severus made the mistake of pointing out that Harry really did grow up in the wild only the once. Because Harry had said: _“See? Even you are romanticizing it! Wizards never understand that people who live outside of Ministry approved norms don’t grow up in the wild, it is just another form of magical community that your people would prefer to pretend that we don’t exist, and if we can’t be dismissed as hags or wizards without wands then we are merely deprived of what your culture sees as magic because it has decided that everything else is too mysterious or exotic to be seen as just normal everyday things in the culture I grew up in. I’ll tell you one thing, my younger self would have loved to have grown up in the wild, because at least then I would not have had gotten my butt kicked by Nana Lindi‘s garden complicates, or shove my tiny hands up inside a sheep because her lamb was having trouble getting out and tiny hands shoved inside a pissed off ewe in labor is the only way to reposition the sodding little-!”_

Severus learned a great deal about Harry’s past from that one conversation. It seemed as if Cunning Folk education relied more on practical application rather than academic study, children utilizing what they have learned through observation or self-discovery over and over again until they could practice without the aid of wands. Baptism by necessity Harry petulantly called it during his rant.

It still didn’t explain how Harry had learned the exact science of how the things he was _aware_ that he did with magic worked (because Harry was not always aware he was doing magic… or that something else from the land itself was doing magic _through_ Harry, and that was immensely disconcerting), Harry could go into great detail about how he was able to breathe life into a flame just by blowing on the candle wick until it caught fire, which spoke of some kind of academic knowledge being passed down in the Cunning Folk community… just no written record that Harry was willing to tell Severus about.

Yet.

He knew that some Cunning Folk masters wrote things down and those books were handed down to an apprentice after the master passed away. Often the apprentice would be moved into the master’s old cottage, or whomever was available to take on the responsibility of the trans-generational cottages. Harry had brought a scroll once, the lad had been eighteen at the time and it was after Severus had been injured during the siege of London they had taken him to Hogwarts infirmary for St. Mungos was also under siege, Severus wasn’t too certain what Harry had done with the scroll but seeing as how it had been decorated with the emblem of one of the cunning folk masters he apprenticed under it must have been for something significant.

When pressed, Harry is wary to admit to anything but because it is Severus who asks the boy reluctantly admits that it was a scroll containing poison antidotes that he thought might help Poppy. Which it had, but he made her agree to imply that Harry had found it in the Potter vault and that it had come from a Pureblooded ancestor of his… because despite everything a lot of the other Healers refused to so much as glance at the document until Harry had specifically said that it had come from a Pureblooded wizard.

Poppy had been pissed off by the bullheaded behavior of her colleagues and ranted to Severus about it even into the present day, but it confirmed Severus’s suspicions that Harry was under no magical oath preventing him from acquiring important written artifacts and sharing the information within.

It was merely caution, for the Ministry has spent so long censoring information that it had ended up harming millions in the process just to keep control over a select few. Kingsley, Granger, and many others were working to change this, but for Harry the damage had already been done and it was better to exorcise caution at all times. To not risk a witch hunt because some wizards had their delicate sensibilities violated by the mere notion that magic could be done without wands by just about anyone.

Which was fine as far as everyone else was concerned, they liked pretending that Harry was unique and all-powerful and James Potter’s practically Pureblooded son, but given Severus’s relationship to Harry he knew the boy’s caution stemmed more out of a fear, and the wizarding world’s attitudes to chalk everything up to Harry’s Potter bloodline made him very nervous. Harry admitted once in the dark of their bedroom that he often worried that one day Severus would get too weirded out by something and never speak to Harry again because Severus knew for a fact that the Potter side of his heritage had absolutely nothing to do with conventional wizard ideas of how heredity worked.

Whatever the hell _that_ meant.

Not at all true at any rate of course. Given that Severus made it a point to become acquainted with Harry’s various mentors and explore the communities Harry grew up around and came back amazed and had gained a little more insight into how Harry came to be as a person, and Severus treasured that. It was something they could both share in, even if Severus could not fully grasp how some of Harry’s unconscious magic worked or why the things Harry could explain to him had to be hidden for fear of persecution.

He does his best to be supportive of Harry, not always getting it quite right, not always able to grasp finer details such as why Harry wouldn’t consider himself a wizard or want to use his fame to bring their world into a new age of understanding and tolerance of wild “hag” magics. Doesn’t understand why Harry gives him long looks as if Severus had just proved Harry’s counter argument for why that would be a very, very bad idea but was far too dense to understand why that would be a terrible idea.

Yet Harry still trusts Severus with all of Harry’s secrets, still stood by Severus’s side, and even relented to share his vast knowledge to other wizards if Severus managed to make a justifiably legitimate case for it.

Severus would never stop fearing the day the wild called Harry back, and if it did then Severus would make sure that it never got to have Harry, but until that day came Severus would always stick by Harry’s side the best he was able. He would encourage Harry to refine his skills and to share in Harry’s cunning folk magic, and even if Harry is exasperated with him for not being able to understand why Harry acted so shy about being a wizard, it is still infinitely clear that Severus must be doing something right, for Harry is still by his side.

XXX

Harry always made himself scarce around the anniversary of Albus’s death. Severus didn’t know why exactly, though it was pretty obvious to see that the lad’s feelings toward the old man’s demise were… complicated to say the least. There was no denying that Albus had made more than a minor misstep in regards to how he treated the boy, for all of the Headmaster’s brilliance he never did get on the right foot with Harry.

Harry’s boggart was an awful thing to behold: Albus all dressed in white with a twinkling gilded crown atop his head as if he were a king, and kindly telling Harry in a sweet voice that pawns have no future. Going on about how it will make a better story if Harry were to never be happy and for him to be sacrificed slowly after a lifetime of torture. How lovely the fairytale would make once the Chosen one was killed at just the right time so that Albus could kill the enemy and be the famous hero again.

Albus in reality was horrified Harry saw him as the boy’s greatest fear, but the specific reasons why Harry feared him so deeply concerned Albus for a different reason. He was convinced for a time that the Dark Lord had been planting lies in the boy’s head, but when Severus had a look inside the boy’s mind (a struggle in of itself since Harry actually took a sudden desperate interest in learning how to clear his mind very quickly) it came out that no one was whispering scary stories in the boy’s ear. Harry had come to those conclusions all by himself.

It had been a devastating revelation for the old man. One in which Albus never recovered from and with the remnant fragments of the Dark Lord’s soul never leading to his grand return but instead leading to a situation that no longer played by the terms of a chess game, Albus had died a man with deep regrets…

And also, possibly insanity. He died of insanity. Practically an attempted murder-suicide really.

Severus tentatively suspected at the time that the man must have beheld suicidal tendencies, only because he had taken _Longbottom_ with him to that cave infested with inferi and actually expected the boy to be competent in his task of-… well he was just barely fifteen at the time. It wasn’t fair of Albus to expect the boy to replace Harry as the chosen one. It was a miracle the boy himself had survived and had not died along with Albus. It was made all the worse that Albus had wanted Harry to go with him initially but Harry outright refused and after it all came out Harry fainted because he believed that Albus was planning on murdering Harry outright.

When he came to Harry, who thought this chosen one business was utter poppycock, pitched the mother of all fits and quit school on the spot. Drew quite a lot of attention as he called Albus many colorful descriptions of madman and child murderer. He had grown to fear the fanaticism found behind the romantic tragic tale of The-Boy-Who-Lived, people treated it more like a fairytale than an actual person who had survived through an event in history and after a few unfortunate events it had felt to Harry as though bad things were happening because the idea that Harry should be the one to save everybody was messing with the adult’s perspective and now people were getting killed all because of a fantasy.

In short Harry blamed himself for Albus’s lack of judgement. This in turn convinced Molly and Arthur as his foster parents to support his decision to leave Hogwarts, which was inconvenient for Severus because at the time of their letter he had only _just_ managed to get the boy to stop sobbing himself sick over the death of Albus and had been slowly working on getting Harry to go back to class.

And just like that, the boy was no longer a student of Hogwarts but just another seemingly ordinary muggle schoolboy. Wasting away all the potential he had on a world that could never offer Harry what he deserved.

Also it was far away from Severus’s ability to protect him, Hogwarts was convenient in that Harry had begun making himself more visible to Severus’s protective line of sight after Severus had gained (negotiated, haggled) Harry’s trust. It made protecting the boy worlds easier.

Harry never fully recovered from the ordeal. Granted he wasn’t recovered from a whole host of the other ordeals he had been subjected to throughout his life, but this one persisted well into the present day like a quiet phantom.

Around this time of year Harry would go out regardless of the weather and sit on the bench in the back garden by the big old Elder tree, diligently crafting corn husk dolls and widdling crude wooden boats for the dolls to float down the stream that ran near their property. Usually accompanied by dried flower petals or a small husk blade placed under the doll with Asian prayers of a sort written on it in ink derived from a special stick that Harry carefully ground against a stone to get the pigment he desired. He would then write the prayers on the plant using a brush he made himself using thread and one of Hedwig’s feathers, then he would proceed to decorate the boat with ink and carved lines in much the same manner.

Redundant in a practical sense, they owned ink in jars as well as proper quills, surely a transfiguration spell would make a better boat, yet…

It must be therapeutic, this old pagan ritual.

Perhaps he should share this with the boy. It seemed so lonely being out there all alone.

…….

Oh lordy Harry was in trouble.

It had started with the dolls as a way of occupying his time until his boyfriend felt a little less raw over the demise of his mentor. Around this time of year Severus tended to get testier than usual and while Harry wanted nothing more than to help his boyfriend feel better through cuddles and a back rub, the thing was that for stuff relating to the evil old gnat it was just better that Harry made himself scarce until Severus got all horny and called Harry back inside.

He wanted to protect Severus from Harry himself, because sure, Harry wasn’t very sorry the old man was gone, but that didn’t mean that he had to be a jerk about it.

Now Severus had gotten it into his head that Harry was performing some sort of ritual for the dead. And Harry could not correct him because then Harry would have to be a jerk about not being sorry that the evil man was gone.

He was _studying_ Harry!

What was worse was that it was an endearing sort of studying, the kind he did when he wanted to learn more about Harry’s culture so they may share it together. Like how Harry carved lanterns out of turnips and carved faces into fat apples slices before they were dried into little shrunken heads… granted he then took the idea and went through the process all on his own with a wand to frighten children at school during holidays instead of aiming towards whimsically keeping evil spirits out, or putting them in a jar of immune support cider potion for fun but they had a nice few days making them together nonetheless.

So added on top of not wanting to point out that Harry wanted to give his boyfriend a wide berth at the moment (because that would be suicidal), Harry also wanted to take care not to inspire the older man in a way that would lead to Minerva coming around to complain.

Again.

He was very sweet with bringing Harry materials, following each one with an endearing kiss that made Harry swoon just a little. Watching in rapt attention as Harry crafted up the scraps of fallen branches and bark into a raft, really Harry wasn’t so stuck up as to let the truth get in the way of a good story to make his boyfriend feel better.

“’S more than one way to make ‘em.” He begins cryptically. “’S good s’ long as it floats for a little while. Thought that counts y’know?”

“So it is a token offering? To the underworld correct?”

“Or wherever spirits seem to drift.” Harry shrugs. “Y’know, rivers and crossroads, standin’ stones an’ caves, places where the boundaries between here and there get blurred. ‘Course you could always build an altar, but then you have to be careful about makin’ real sure to make clear that only certain passed on spirits are allowed to visit. Make sure you don’t wind up making a blurred boundary line where you sleep. Not everything on the other side was born from our world. ‘S why those Ouija boards and wannabe dark masters are nothing but trouble. This way’s safer. No dark magic needed at all, just… let nature take its natural course.”

“This is part of your belief system?”

“Not mine personally.” Harry admits with an sheepish little smile. “Me personally? I lean more towards the secular end of the Cunning Folk spectrum, but just ‘cause I don’t believe innit doesn’t mean that it can’t make me feel better, the thought is what counts.”

Harry sets down the boats into the water, watching quietly for a moment to make sure they’ll float at least a ways before turning his back to the river so that he can face Severus.

“Supposedly the boat is supposed to shift through over to the river Styx in a flash of light as it leaves this realm behind or something.” Harry snorts disbelieving of his own words, completely missing how the small toy fades away before Severus’s eyes with a faint glow. “Just silly folk tales really, I’ve never seen it, and I’ll be daft if it’s real. All the damn things do is get turned over after a ways and it all gets washed out to wherever the water takes them. That’s why it’s important to use materials that won’t end up as litter- Severus? What is it?”

“…”

“Severus?”

Shaking himself back to the present Severus stands as if nothing is amiss. “I think I shall like to shag you up against the wall after we return.”

“Well! …I won’t say no to that!”


	2. Walking On Hedges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two very different views of the past, the world, and of magic.

Harry had learned a lot about the castle in the one(ish) month the wizards had first captured him. So after Harry had been captured a second time and had been forced to attend mind-invasion sessions at the castle with Snape to discover why he wasn’t willing to worship the Head Warlock like everyone else, Harry knew precisely what to do.

Harry had been meticulous in determining just what he would ask from the Room of Requirement to help him keep Snape out of his memories.

The first tactic had involved a large bath filled with spiders, a tightfitting body suit thin enough to feel the tiny spindly spider legs but not allow the buggers inside, and a bubble space helmet with speakers inside to play Zen meditation mantras in his ear. All done about an hour and a half before his appointment in Snape’s office.

It had given Harry some interesting nightmares but it had worked a charm on keeping Snape out of his head. Not occlumency exactly but it did give Harry some mental focus, keeping his mind on how that hour in the tub had felt. It was a fascinating thing hearing all those swear words come out in Snape’s lovely voice.

Harry did this several more times, getting creative with changing the method of mild self-torture in order to keep Snape out of his head and instead gift Harry with that special reproachful look Harry knew was reserved just for him in those days. The nightmares kept getting all sorts of interesting, yet they were still more bearable than his memories from… well it was just overall more bearable.

Snape was actually fearful for Harry’s well-being, not throwing a childish tantrum over perceived defiance as Harry had expected, but deeply concerned in such a sincere way that actually made it hurt just being in the same room as that pityingly understanding deep voice. Harry couldn’t put his finger on exactly why Snape had gone from always sniping at him to _My god, we have driven this child to madness_ , but years later when Snape became Severus, Harry asked him why he’d been so nice and Severus had said that Harry’s mild self-torture had left Harry so desensitized to the world around him that it frightened the hell out of the man because children do not normally act in such ways.

At the time when Snape pushed him enough Harry doggedly admitted that the ill-advised extreme methods he used to focus his mind were justifiable self-defense, citing the staff’s inability to protect students from all manner of dangers that Harry had either heard of or personally witnessed, even going so far as to question James’s legitimacy as this perceived grand hero since Harry had been through his father’s old things and the golden boy image certainly did not match up with historical evidence which showed that James had actually not been a very nice person, possibly mentally disturbed given the way his own old letters to friends proved that he had delighted in the pain of fellow students and that he had kept a stalker’s trophy box of his mother.

Snape had not been able to hide his quiet delight that Harry wasn’t terribly impressed by his father, so Harry had changed tactics and tried to make Snape uncomfortable towards why he refused to willingly open himself up in such a vulnerably intimate way to a man who, for all Harry knew, would then turn around and gleefully do a great deal of harm. Harry claimed that being naked and bound under the man’s mercy would be less of a violation than that of someone forcefully pushing their way into the mind, since Snape could do a great deal of damage under Dumbledore’s orders and Harry feared what the politician had told his loyal servant to do. Harry did not trust Snape to put what was right over the whims of a politician looking to use Harry as a pawn in some frivolous scheme.

To which Snape actually praised Harry for understanding the full dangers of such an exorcise, and why it was so important to make sure Harry’s mind hadn’t been tampered with before they had “rescued” him.

In response Harry fled the area because Snape praising Harry for being determined not to let the man do his assigned job signaled something terribly off with the force of the universe.

Of course Snape was the opposite of deterred, and he tried to follow Harry to prevent him from furthering his practice of creating such “disquieting” sensations. Not knowing where Harry was inventing those memories or who was helping him, but committed to finding out.

So Harry had the Room of Requirement throw up some dense dark forests filled with animated dinosaur skeletons and fallout bunkers with large mazes of corridors for the man to get lost in. Just in case.

Eventually Snape did manage to find the general location of the Room of Requirement, but Snape apparently did not know how to summon the door at first, let alone know what the hell the room was and it had been dreadfully confusing because Snape had opened the door to find a forest, a TB hospital, and a post-apocalyptic military base overrun by plants, and when he tried to show the other teachers the door wasn’t there.

Harry kept having to creatively slip past the man as Snape stood guard, which was also how Snape discovered that Harry could turn “invisible” (it was more of a matter of bending light around his body and blending into the hallway the same way those optical illusions worked not true invisibility) at will. Thankfully the forests and mazes worked a treat.

Snape didn’t appreciate getting lost in spooky places at all. The completely empty much cleaner recreation of the abandoned TB hospital Harry used to live inside had the man impatiently calling out Harry’s name in the lonely corridors. Just to break the oppressive silence Harry reckoned, because Snape didn’t do the same for the Edenborough Natural History museum or the London art galleries.

Then one day Ron and Hermione got it into their heads to find out where Harry was disappearing off to for long stretches of time and for some unholy reason they were better at finding Harry than Snape. Ron’s screaming had alerted the older man directly to Harry’s location, to which Harry was promptly fished out of the tank filled with disturbing deep sea creatures, Hermione was yanked away from the water when she tried to demonstrate to a freaked Ron that the animals were harmless, Harry was carried out of the room, then promptly carried back in and dressed when Harry’s Edwardian swimsuit vanished (giving a passing number of students including Draco Malfoy an eyeful), and then he was finally taken to the infirmary where he was held for observation overnight. Since Harry was kinda out of it the whole time, Snape feared he’d managed to fall into a incapacitated madness of some sort, tried to look into Harry’s mind, could only see dark water with glowing toothy things, and felt justified in proclaiming Harry insane.

To which Harry had rolled his eyes at the older man, quipping back that being shoved in a cupboard under the stairs most of your formative life never made people into Sir Galahad, you utter fool. Did it never once sink in to your inbred little brain that maybe focusing on spiders is a better alternative to what I had to live through? Leave me alone!

Snape, realizing that he needed something more effective than threatening to take away points from a house Harry didn’t give a damn about, proceeded to do something that to the present day Harry still hadn’t quite been able to forgive the older man for.

He had called in Molly.

A low blow. An inconceivably dirty trick. It worked like a charm.

It had been fantastically awkward explaining to his adopted mother that he didn’t care if Snape was trying to get into his memories for his own good. He didn’t want to relive all those horrible things and he certainly would not stand Snape gossiping about it all to a man like Dumbledore who was the source behind most of the terrible things that had happened to Harry.

Molly got him to let Snape in, but in turn Severus had to swear himself to secrecy about what he sees in Harry’s mind.

To his credit Severus stopped complaining that Harry has lost his mind once the man sees _why_ he was so desperate to lock it all behind a bathtub filled with spiders. Harry did not appreciate the open looks of pity as he relieved himself of his stomach’s contents in a bucket and cried his eyes out, but at least Snape had enough presence of mind to sense that saying anything about it in that moment was not a good idea.

Of course Harry reflexively deflected Severus the next time they had a session. That was an absolute given after the first round of pure awful awfulness. So Snape gentled his approach, worked with Harry to relax his mind to the intrusion, taking more care with reviewing Harry’s memories so that it didn’t hurt.

Snape actually proved himself to be trustworthy despite Harry’s fears, and in turn a deep trust towards the man’s judgement on all matters was slowly fostered. It was an extremely intimate experience so Severus had to be gentle in order to prevent Harry from fighting him off, and the knowledge Snape gained through Harry’s time in the parts of the magical world that were filled with cunning folk and those who practiced magic without wands was extremely enriching academically. Though knowing best how to handle Harry by navigating through his past was a skill unto itself.

The knowledge that Snape was unable to snitch about Harry’s most guarded secrets was a comfort that became the foundation for Harry to slowly realize that Snape was actually one of his best allies in this world of warped fairytales. Bit by bit Harry allowed himself to put faith in Severus’s advisements until the man became the only human being Harry had ever allowed himself to be so thoroughly vulnerable with.

Yet the facts still remained that Harry had… voluntarily gone to such comical scary extremes in the first place just to avoid sharing his past.

It’s still a sore point with them, that Harry was willing to go that far to keep Severus out and that it had bothered Severus so much to begin with. Like, Severus understood the desire to not relive certain things but then he also had moments where he got super touchy about it, acting as if Harry needed to atone for his actions.

This in turn baffled Harry because he regretted nothing. Particularly since the whole situation helped them gain a mutual understanding that eventually led to a shared quiet intimacy that Harry cherished quite a bit.

It became that _thing_ that came up in many arguments throughout the years whenever Severus needed to prove that Harry was still too unstable to make certain decisions on his own. Harry called him paranoid, but Severus countered that paranoia did not equal being wrong.

“He won’t let me get a pet tarantula.” Harry complained to Hermione one day at the Burrow during winter break of fourth year.

“Good Lord why the hell would you want one!” Ron called from the other room. “Where would you even keep it? Because it’s not staying here!”

“He’s asked Hagrid to get me a proper pet, an owl I think he said.” Harry had sighed, he had been joking about getting a spider for a familiar, he hadn’t expected the man to go off on him with a passionate speech about the importance of a wizard and his familiar, and that the animal was only to help not hinder their master’s state of mind.

Though Harry would never trade Hedwig for the world in the end.

It was more than just the tarantula though. Severus, for all the overwhelming ways Hogwarts and the Ministry itself had fallen through on its promises for all magical children finding a safe haven free of persecution… still fervently believed that it was for the benefit of all magical children to go to Hogwarts, or some other major magical school. That magic was not a conscious choice to whether or not it was practiced by individuals, but something that needed to be forced upon everyone.

The wizards like to say that an obscurus happens when you don’t learn magic specifically at Hogwarts, that it was a muggleborn’s disease, that Pureblood families never got it… despite the fact that all the evidence points to an obscurus being the child body’s natural defense against severe mental or physical trauma. Harry, who practiced magic, nearly got a big bad one because the old gnat hurt him so badly, and while the illness had many levels of intensity that did not always manifest into a shadow it was brought on mostly in cases of abuse. Not as an excuse to try to ship children off to Hogwarts of all places.

Sirius Black was unfortunately dead (no one dared speak about how, but Harry heard whispers that it had been an _accident_ caused by the Head Warlock’s own hand) by the time Harry was brought to Hogwarts, but from what Harry had learned of Black family “madness” Harry knew instantly the signs of a non-manifesting obscurus when he heard it.

It is a _carefully_ cultivated misconception that you could only learn magic by getting a wand and going to a recognized school or that the Ministry had the ability to find every magical child ever born. Harry had learned how to conduct magic using wax, pins, and his own power of will, and he, like many other magical children who did not attend Hogwarts, had evaded Ministry sensors due to the fact that the Ministry sensors were so ineffective that it couldn’t tell the difference between a house elf and a human. If you found yourself outside of the specific magical genetic trait spectrum the Ministry calibrated their sensors toward, or you just didn’t use a wand made from that one Ministry approved vendor, you could practice magic all you wanted as a kid! Furthermore, the areas of the Isles that did not adhere to Post-Roman wand-styles of magic had charms that eclipsed the Ministry’s ability to hunt them down and tell them what to do.

Muggle, meaning born from mud, muddying of the waters (of the inbred gene pool), was a wizard’s word. For the world outside of wizards there was no such word. Just people who choose to practice magic and those who choose not to… or just don’t know about magic because science is more avant-garde in recent decades thanks to the Age of Enlightenment and the Cold War making it so popular.

Magic is born into people in a spectrum of genetic diversity. Just like people coming in a variety of eye, hair, and skin colors so too do people come with different magical traits. The reason why the Ministry didn’t send out Hogwarts letters to everybody, and thus held onto the notion that they magic was rare, was because they became so inbred over the generations that their genes mutated into a very distinct magical signature… that was only manifested by the numerous relatives of what was essentially one big inbred extended family.

Which: ew, because once you stop to do the genetic math it becomes apparent pretty quickly that as far as genetics go the Purebreds are a lot more closer in relation than just kissing cousins in some cases.

Again: _Ew_.

Those born outside the known branches of the big family tree tended to have an ancestor somewhere in their family that linked back to London’s magical Ministry family. A bit, for example, like the Royal families of Europe tracing their lines back to Queen Victoria, and the realization that the current Queen and her husband are in fact second cousins on the side of Cristian IX of Denmark and third cousins on the English side because they both share a great-great grandmother in Queen Victoria.

Suffice to say that the London magical Ministry family tree is much more complicated since everybody is a first, second, or third cousin (sometimes even a secret half-sibling) all at once to one another. Making selection for future Hogwarts students ridiculously easy because it all… stays within the family.

Ew.

Naturally, the _rest_ of the magical community in the Isles was far bigger than official estimates, and far more diverse when accounting for all the native cultures that still persisted even into the modern day, and the magic from immigrants coming in from outside the Isles, added to the newer styles of urban magic found inside big muggle cities that merged technology with complicated ancient charm magic.

Hogwarts was… inconvenient for many who qualified for their school invitation letter. Expensive, tearing children away from families for too long, and offered very little in the way of future prospects unless you planned on working for the Ministry in some capacity or another. Most people had to find alternatives.

This fact seemed to hit Severus pretty hard at first. It didn’t break him, but the man just couldn’t process it for several weeks and it soon became Harry’s turn to try to be gentle and soothing while Severus had the rough time during the sessions. Everything Severus had thought he had known was turned upside-down and Harry’s sessions with him ran long because Severus had endless questions as he struggled through his deep dark fears of being burned at the stake by a horde of religious zealots.

Severus’s first instinct to try to comfort himself was very… imperialistic, unfortunately. His English roots showing through in a very unflattering way, to which, much like his ancestors, when confronted by something so alien to his mindset Severus freaked the fuck out and went into colonizing mode in order to try to make it familiar and less alien. He made up a ton of false explanations to himself trying to rationalize what he was seeing with no basis in reality because the mere thought of magic being practiced so close to the wizards’ feared muggles set off Severus’s fear of witch hunts and all that rot. For a little while Harry was reminded of that book with the insane Spanish character who thought windmills were giants and tried to attack them. Here was this grown man trying to rationalize what he’d seen as if the power of his denial could force reality back into the tidy “ _we magical therefore we super special and better than those muggles”_ narrative drilled into his skull since he was… born pretty much.

Severus thankfully got much more tolerably better even if he never quite fully embraced the fact that all humans can do magic, but those few weeks were surreal as hell.

Harry was at least somewhat assured in being fairly certain that the older man wouldn’t go around condemning other styles of magic given that he actually took careful notes of the numerous things Harry kept explaining to him (and there was a lot to explain to a man who only knew of wand magic)… but he also made it clear he didn’t want Harry going near _those types of people_ ever again… and that he was launching a campaign to see that every magical child was schooled accordingly so that their world would remain safe from the murderous muggles!

It had been… heartbreaking actually… how much fear the man had at the time. nearly incapacitated with it some days, caught between his fascination and fear being in Harry’s brain to learn all he could glean from this alien world had become an obsession.

A semi-nice one though, because in this they shared a sort of common ground with being terrified of the world the other lived in and trying to assure one another that they were safe. An interesting cultural exchange even if Severus’s proposed campaign was absolutely silly.

Harry saluted the man’s bravery but refused to help in that impossible endeavor (no way Hogwarts could house millions of people). This was because Harry didn’t have the patience to explain to a xenophobic wizard that his little micro-country was not _special_ because magic was actually everywhere and never stopped being everywhere. He may have been growing to actually like the man but even with their blossoming alliance Severus was still a wizard. Severus refused to even contemplate the fact that magic is as common as rocks, he still seemed to be under an impression that magic was rare… and Harry did not correct him.

Harry knew enough about wizards to know that he wouldn’t want to deal with one in the throes of an existential crisis, so he had only told the man about the charms used to evade sensors instead of telling him about the sensors only tracking those related to the family tree, and lay in the metaphorical bed he had made for himself.

Severus didn’t take too kindly to the whole Harry ** _refusing_** to “ _save the wild children from their savage ways”_ thing, since he wanted Harry to help find all the “wild” magical children and be a posterchild for the benefits of a Hogwarts education. To which Harry again refused stating that he wasn’t positive they’d be treated all that well given how fanatical Severus’s world tended to be about coming from an approved social background. It would be much easier if Severus’s world changed first, then maybe the children would come willingly all on their own.

It wasn’t likely, but maybe a few of the more wealthier families might be willing to abandon their kids to some strange preppy boarding school that offered little to no opportunities other than a career at a desk job or a shop.

“Then help change the world!” Severus had sniped at him. “Put your fame to good use for once!”

Harry had met enough immigrant families and read about the “boarding schools” (ethnocide prisons) the western European powers had set up in their colonies to know that the ideal world Severus was envisioning would turn out to be nothing but a hellscape nightmare.

“No! That would mean I’d have to play nanny to a lot of incompetent adults. Stop trying to push the hope that my generation will make it all better. We’re still too young! I’ve just turned fourteen two days ago! You lot are the adults; _you_ convince them to start acting their age!”

“All you have to do is tell them where to start looking.” Severus meant the Ministry thugs who pretended to be police. The same ones who arrested those suspected of being hags and sometimes blackmailed low-income communities for money and sexual “favors”.

There was a reason why most eventually left the Ministry’s sphere of influence and gave up magic in extreme cases. If they did not they were sure to suffer fates worse than death.

“And then promptly get in the middle of trouble because they’ll resort to kidnapping and barging into my world like a horde of thugs? No thank you.” Harry hissed back.

“This isn’t about you Potter! It’s-!”

“Exactly! I’m fourteen! It’s not about me at all!” They glared at one another. “Look, if you can prove to me that your government won’t pull the same stunts England had to the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and the Cornish, _and_ muggleborns, then I will help you start with helping the kids who have run away from home. The rest you are just going to have to figure out some kind of propaganda thing to get families to _want_ to send their kids here. It’s not going to be as easy as just plopping them down in class and counting on the _wonder of magic_ to get them to want to be part of this world. Just ask any half-way house or children’s youth center on the islands, a poncy rich boarding school isn’t equipped for that kind of child care.”

“Yet.”

“…”

It never came to be of course (thank the stars), life got in the way and Severus was forced to eventually concede that maybe stealing children en-mass was probably a terrible diplomatic move. After the man had time to process his initial freak-out over how Harry learned “wild” magic, Severus calmed down enough to finally realize that if the muggles weren’t organizing witch hunts now, despite the many generations of people practicing magic without Ministry control, then it was only logical to conclude that muggles simply weren’t clever enough to know magic when they saw it. After all, Harry was unusually powerful in wandless styles of magics, but the average wizard was not. Without wands people can’t even summon a simple luminous spell.

Harry didn’t know where the lines of communication got lost but even after seeing Harry’s memories the man seemed incapable of processing the whole… magic wasn’t exactly as big of a secret as his government, school, and books claimed it was… thing. Severus held onto this fear of horrific witch hunts just like in the bad old days… despite the fact that very few _men_ and almost no wizards had actually, historically, been killed in a witch hunt. It was mostly only lower class peasant women who were accused and killed, and of those women for the most part they weren’t killed for their magic so much as they were killed for simply being women and girls in an era where sexism was at its most fatal.

Also Catholics. Lots of Catholic wizards both male and female were slaughtered, not in witch hunts, but because England decided to force the whole Protestant thing.

Also the witch hunts mostly happened during the Protestant Tudor period and the Steward period. Not way back in the early eleven hundreds when Hogwarts had been naught but a former king’s estate taken over by four wizards after something or other rose up from the forest and deposed the king for trying to get rich off of the lumber industry. Just like in the modern day only the wealthy could afford to attend, and there were no sodding witch hunts against rich people back then! Nor now!

Severus, to Harry’s complete surprise, _had_ been able to process the long-ago history of witch hunts as the _facts_ laid it out (possibly helped by the fact that it was so far into the past that it did not affect him directly) and spent a very long time trying to wrap his head around the fact that the Ministry history books were nothing but propaganda and lies. Eventually coming to terms with the historical evidence and along with them his brief crusade to civilize the wild witches came to a full stop sometime in November of Ron’s fourth Hogwarts year. Instead switching gears toward learning as much as he could about Harry’s style of magic and studying the “wild” magical communities, and eventually when Severus became the new Headmaster after the old gnat got himself killed off, Severus began integrating what he was learning into the school curriculum.

Yet despite everything Harry has done to prove that he is not _wild_ but just a different breed of magic practitioner entirely, and a well-educated one at that (at least as far as being able to do actual math and knowing his history and literature. Something not emphasized at Hogwarts), sometimes, whenever they are at an impasse about something Severus suddenly pulls out the “you are too unstable to make this decision card” and digs his heels in. Refusing to budge.

Like at the moment. The twins, after learning of America’s epic Halloween celebration traditions, wanted to try their hand at capitalizing on the whole spooky season aesthetic and, somehow, managed to create their own version of the Room or Requirement in their joke shop and they wanted Harry to pop down and help them come up with something thematically appropriate since Ron always tells the story of Harry hiding in a nightmare land to evade Severus every other holiday.

Harry didn’t think it was a big deal at all to help out and only mentioned it in passing about how his day went after he had finished with his university classes only to left stunned and confused when Severus went from calm to tantrum in less than a second.

“It has been over a decade sweetie, why are you acting as if I’m going to cover myself in spiders again? There is no reason for me to go to full-out extremes to keep people from my mind. You also know that Ron is going to be there, we all agreed to leave the multi-legged crawly things out to keep down the screaming.” Harry brings up after Severus has had time to calm down and Harry has had the chance to decipher what Severus was so upset about and why he got himself even more worked up when Harry just stared at him blankly instead of immediately understanding what the heck there was to be upset about.

“You can’t be trusted.” Severus snips petulantly, hunching down further in his chair.

“Can’t be trusted with what? Are you afraid I’ll make it too scary for the children? Too dangerous?”

“No you fool.” Severus casts him a broken scowl, which is pronounced by the shape of the bones on his long face, his hooked nose making him look like a caricature of the Wicked Witch of the West. “How could you possibly not understand why there is cause for me to be upset?”

Not for the first time Harry wonders whether Severus may be on the autism spectrum, or if perhaps Severus just wanted to deliberately get into a fight.

Instead of saying _“I’m not a mind reader”_ like he would for anybody else Harry tries a different approach. Trying to evade a fight while flying blind.

“The situation is completely different Severus.” Harry rubs the man’s arm gently, sitting down on the floor so that he won’t feel threatened by Harry towering over him. “There is no fear for my life this time. No overarching consequences if I don’t hide my mind in time. What I come up with for this project will be empty of the state my mind was in when I was a frightened boy thrust into an alien world I did not understand. It will only serve a purely aesthetic purpose so that the kids will have a safe place to get their candy without having their parents worry about flashers, thugs, someone putting razor blades into an apple or rat poison mixed in with the smarties… or whatever the wizarding variant is for evil adults who like to hurt children on Halloween.”

Severus grimaces and Harry knows he’s missed the mark, but Severus probably doesn’t want to say so because Harry’s muggle newspaper has been reporting incidents of creeps in clown suits harassing people in the streets lately.

“…Is this because of mum?” Harry tries, he would understand then if it was.

“No.” Severus’s head sinks down further over his shoulders.

Well crap. What was it then?

“I know now that I went too far back then.” Harry tries.

“Do you really?” Severus challenges.

Ah.

“Molly says that you feared I was going to wind up in a padded room.”

“You almost did.” Severus speaks heavily, like it was a promise.

Harry has to think about that for a moment.

“I was in a very bad place back then.”

“Hogwarts is not so terrible.”

“I meant mentally sweetie.”

“No you don’t.”

XXX

The state of Harry’s sanity has always been a source of deep anxiety for Severus.

It became even more so after Albus’s demise.

He had been blind to see Albus’s own impending self-destruction, the signs were all prominent yet his slow descent into madness was left undiagnosed until only after the man’s suicide and possible attempted murder. The answers as to why, or even what Albus had hoped to accomplish alone with only a child to use as the second body needed to make use of the boat left a mystery, for Albus did not leave behind anything to explain himself, not even his memories for a portrait, the one that now adorned on the wall of the Headmaster’s office was still and silent, like any other ordinary muggle portrait, but in this case the implications behind the still silence struck an unnerved cord in anyone who knew the full scope of what had happened. They were forced to try to piece together some sense from what was left behind only to come up with further and further distressing evidence of Albus’s madness. Quietly, secreting behind the scenes to at the very least try to preserve the man’s reputation as they had once known him.

William Weasley at Harry’s request had taken one careful look at the cave in question and then carefully explained to the grieving Order that only an absolute heartless fool or suicidal madman would venture in without an entire crew of people carrying light torches and casting spells to drain the lake and lift the inferi curse from the corpses so that the bodies could be identified and laid to rest. It could be done but it would have taken a smart person who wanted to clean up the inferi pit to gather a whole team of people to work together.

And Albus had been no fool.

The locket Albus had told Longbottom they were trying to retrieve had been devoid of any form of magic or anything of note aside from its historical value as Slytherin’s possession, to which the Dark Lord had valued greatly in his quest to legitimize himself as an heir. A trap laid out by the Dark Lord to ensnare hapless fools looking to get at his treasure, and a place to conveniently dispose of the corpses of those he killed. Merely a holding tank for if he ever deemed it necessary to set an army of animated corpses upon Hogsmeade, nothing more. All were things that Albus in his great wisdom would have been able to see through with ease.

He had _wanted_ to die.

Likely wanting to drag Harry to the grave along with him as he had nearly done with Longbottom. The prophecy orb they found buried at the very back of his wardrobe had said that the Chosen One could not live while the Dark Lord existed and vice versa.

He had wanted Harry to die.

When Harry refused to follow Albus anywhere Severus remembered the old man warning Harry that grave consequences would soon transpire that would destroy all that Harry had built in the magical world if he had not come.

Yet Harry still refused and in his delusional state Albus had attempted to punish Harry by killing Longbottom, or have Longbottom accuse Harry of shirking his duties should he survive. Likely believing that Harry would then learn to fear a man who was long dead and follow the breadcrumbs Albus left behind to lead to Harry’s own suicide.

It had been devastating, this revelation, of Albus’s quest to kill off the Dark Lord, a man who had died years ago and would never return, had consumed him into an obsession. An obsession to perhaps start another war to finish off what had been started with more bloodshed.

Madness.

None of them had even suspected he had sought to kill Harry to incite another war. Even though now, looking back, the signs they were all there!

Harry had undergone so much worse than Albus, who had lived a largely sheltered and happy life, barely even going out to the same battles he sent others out into to fight for him. Who had taken pains to mold Harry into the child soldier he desired and tried to orchestrate Harry to die when Albus deemed it convenient for his plans.

Severus knew… feared that Harry was more at risk than anybody else to succumb to Albus’s plans if pushed the wrong way. Perhaps Harry beheld far more sanity than Albus, who believed that dead men could rise from death’s clutches after fourteen years and refused to listen to any evidence that proved the Dark Lord had made a miscalculation in his plans to use horcruxes to resurrect himself. Most likely not factoring in the possibility that his body would be vaporized into nothing but a bloodied smear on the floor and thus irretrievable, or that breaking his soul into so many fragments had weakened him past being able to return, or any of the numerous other explanations as to why Severus’s dark mark faded before scabbing over and falling off completely.

Harry’s is a different breed of insanity. Harry covered himself in a bathtub filled with spiders because he knew that he could not occlude in time to keep Severus out and so he created memories that clung to Severus’s mind with the sensations of thousands of tiny insect feet or the brush of glowing fins. Things that spoke too intimately with the lizard part of Severus’s brain and not in a good way. And Harry himself suffered horribly for it as a consequence! He’d stagger into Severus’s office or even bump into Severus himself in a desensitized daze, almost completely unresponsive, and sometimes shaking.

Through the Room of Requirement and the occlumency lessons Severus had learned that Harry’s mind was filled with his traumas manifesting in mist filled forested landscapes hiding lumbering monstrous creatures, broken hollow structures, lonely buildings filled with disturbing artifacts, the wilds of nature having invaded the boy’s mind until it created whole worlds both strange and terrifying. Proof that the land itself had taken over Harry from within and was reacting to the boy’s life of distress by growing over the crumbled ruins of whomever Harry had once been when he had been a very young child. Before, Severus suspects, he had become vulnerable to the influence of whatever lay within him now.

Finding harry inside the shallow dark pool with the bubble charm fitted over his head so that he could breathe… Harry looked-… no, Severus could _sense_ that in the world thrown up by the room Harry was not the master but one of the many creatures who resided within. The room could not create objects or food that existed in the real world and yet the water that dampened Harry’s skin did not vanish along with the swim clothes, nor did the leaves that got caught in Granger’s hair, and Ronald, who did not know of the limitations of the room, caught one of the glowing fish and brought it back to his dorm.

Severus feared the wilderness of the land itself that entwined with Harry’s own magic would one day call Harry back. Permanently. Unlike with Albus he is confident that Harry would not pull a stupid stunt with the intention of taking his own life. Harry is a survivor to the core and Severus knew from the boy’s memories that even at his lowest he simply was not built for self-destruction in such an irreversible way.

No. The wilds would merely call Harry back and weave him into the landscape just as it has been depicted in the oldest of surviving stories of ancient Britannia. Ancient forces to which those born with the gift of magic were left at the mercy of until the Romans came with their wands and their more advanced ways of doing everything. The Romans were the invaders and enslaved the populace, but they had also given the people a tool to conduct magic without something as untamable as what resides inside of Harry taking up residence in their bodies.

And Harry did not know. Is completely unaware of what entwined within him, of what peered out from the depths of his mother’s eyes…

How could Severus trust the blasted room not to awaken the wilderness within and spirit Harry away?

“Would it help if you were to just give them bottled memories of what my rooms looked like back then?” Harry asks with a defeated put-upon sigh while they are reading in bed for the evening. Harry with his class course material and Severus making notations within the latest potions journal respectively.

Severus has to stop and consider this.

There wasn’t anything strictly wrong with Harry helping out his brothers in this manner. It is a service to the community and a better means to spend the days leading up to the anniversary of his parents’ murders than brooding at home with Severus. Harry would not attend during the actual day of course, being of mind that Albus’s _Harry Potter Day_ celebration was in ghastly bad taste, and ever since Albus’s death Harry has quietly promoted every single non-Potter worshipping event in the magical world. Hoping with every passing year that the next generations would find Harry boring in comparison to the grander spectacle of Halloween.

Yet…

“I shall send forth Hedwig tonight, that computer contraption of yours should produce a few acceptable references to inspire the troublemakers and shall not scar the children for life. Like taking one look into the worlds grown from your mind undoubtably would.”

“Make sure it’ll be safe for the magical divergent children.” Harry requests as Severus heaves himself to sit up on the edge of the bed.

It takes nearly a full minute for Severus to translate what Harry means.

“The word you mean is squibs dear. Those pitiful souls who cannot wield magic are called squibs.”

“Magic comes in a spectrum sweetie. Just because a wand isn’t involved doesn’t mean that there aren’t other tools they can use to direct their power.”

“In very rare cases only, where a few who have been misdiagnosed as squibs can wield very faint forms of magic with aids, as you should know since it is an absolute fact you can sense untapped potential in ways conventional spells cannot yet detect. Yet because you are so wary of the spotlight being directed in your direction you hide behind the trouble twins and their joke shop gadgets to discover them.” This has been something that has endlessly exasperated Severus for years now. Severus had seen from Harry’s memories from his time out in the wild that some children are not necessarily squibs even if they can never wield a wand, it is more that the pathways that lead to the source of their magical power are arranged in crooked or skewed ways that impede healthy magic casting in the proper manner.

Harry calls it a magical spectrum, but Severus knows Harry is just too kind to call it an outright disability.

“What I wouldn’t give to have you go back to take your NEWTS and become a Healer.” Severus bemoans with a sigh. “You could pioneer an entirely new branch of medicine to help the disabled children learn that they are at least not squibs.” To have Harry blissfully happy in their world without the shadow of Albus haunting every step.

Harry rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to be a mediwizard sweetie, and I also don’t want to be known as some kind of mystical wizard Jesus either, or have to deal with people lecturing me all day that there is no way that their child is magical because then they’d have to come to terms with the fact that they’ve been punishing their own kids for not being the perfect heirs they wanted. Just because I’m good at something doesn’t mean that it would make me happy to just settle for a soulless career in it.”

“You are just too soft to be able to break the bad news to hopeful parents when one of their children has no magical potential at all.” Severus replies knowingly, and he does know Harry. With his big soft heart and his well of empathy that went out to those who were suffering. He can’t even sit through some violent scenes in the television shows they watch without hiding into Severus’s shoulder, or hiding into Severus’s shoulder during outrageously embarrassing scenes because Harry could not help but curl up into a ball in sympathy for the hapless fictional characters.

Not the fragile youth Albus had tried to break for the purpose of his imaginary schemes.

“I also know that the magical government would charge the price of magical aids tools at sky-high prices, and make them have to register as something lesser-than wizards that have to be constantly monitored _, and_ offer pompous con-artists be available as supposed tutors to only the most wealthy and gullible to spend more money on just to give their children a magical education.” Harry shoots back.

“…True.” Severus can’t help but agree. It wasn’t ideal but at the very least the twins sold the necessary tools for the disabled wizards and witches at a price even Severus would have been able to afford as a child, and the little starter booklets Harry had contributed exhaustive research to create with the very basic structure theory of these disability safe magical styles were free. Cleverly marketed as being _“friendly to those who have even just a small spark of magic”_ and placed next to the section of wares that did not require a magical talent to work. It is far less intimidating than going to St. Mungos, and Severus knows that Harry had a horrific experience from the place that did overcharge for the things that were not covered by the Ministry’s free healthcare guidelines.

To which this previously unknown condition _would be_ overcharged to treat since it is not covered or recognized by law… at the present moment.

Perhaps things could change if…

“Don’t even think about suggesting it.” Harry cut the idea off before it has a chance to be voiced. “Nobody wants to be diagnosed by the boy who was raised in the big scary wild, and I refuse to give con-artists new material to prey upon the vulnerable with promises to turn them into wizards. You know the type of madmen I tend to attract.”

Severus sighs, a deep sad sound. “Unfortunately I do know, all too well.”

Harry leans over to kiss the side of Severus’s jaw. “At least I’m doing something I like, and I’m with the man I love who is talented and intelligent in his own right, plus for most of the time someone isn’t trying to chop my head off with a sword. That’s isn’t so bad is it?”

“No, but I just… always hoped there would be a place in our world that you would take to.” Severus turns so that he can look Harry in the eye. “You are so much like your mother, it is an incredible shame that you cannot share the same joy she beheld of the magical world, and instead the muggle world with its utterly dull trappings gets to have you instead.”

“Honey, even my professor has admitted that our required reading was written by someone with an editor who didn’t do their job.”

“I was speaking of the documentary of the history of kitchens.”

“There is a long tradition of Cunning folk craftily using what they had on hand for dual purposes.“

“Hiding their tools of magic by using seemingly ordinary objects. Yes, I know why it was important for you to watch. And _it is_ hiding Harry, why on Earth would anyone use the same cauldron they brewed potions in to cook supper?”

“Well if you couldn’t afford another pot, and just having a wand lying about is a bit inconvenient if you can’t afford a Hogwarts education because you’re a peasant… besides they used bones for divination, and- hmn.”

“Not my point and you know it.” Severus says after he breaks from the kiss. “I am proud of your accomplishments, but it still does not negate the fact that it saddens me that you have never forgiven us enough or give your birthright more of a chance.”

Harry’s raised brow says a lot about Harry’s feelings toward forgiveness after a lifetime of pain. _You are a silly but I love you anyway for your naivete anyway_ , says that look.

Severus kisses the look away, ignores the guilt of his own involvement in the formation of Harry’s instinctual aversion to his birthright, the change that must have transpired between the ages of eleven and thirteen. He had certainly undergone quite the transformation between the age of one and the age of eleven with the most prominent example being how Harry’s scar had gone from a small Z shape likened to a stylized lightning bolt to an explosion of jagged lines not unlike the true lightning strikes found in nature. In Harry’s memories the cunning woman whom Harry mentored under had said that the Dark Lord had put an accidental curse upon Harry where he stuck a piece of his will under Harry’s scar in a last bid to steal magic from Harry like a parasite. Albus claimed fervently that it was not a curse and Harry had a horcrux, yet Severus could not help but disagree since the primitive ritual used to extract the parasitic curse, albeit crude, had removed the whole infestation without needing to destroy Harry, as what would have been needed to be done if it truly were a soul fragment. As all of the research Severus had done on dark masters past had shown.

Further evidence was shown in Harry’s scar fading considerably between eleven and fourteen, and with a daily regimen of Severus’s own special brewed scar-away salve it almost vanished completely by the time Harry was fifteen. A cursed scare does not completely heal over or fade. While a very nasty scar that is still faintly seen in certain conditions, the fact that it faded at all shows that no magic was left behind.

Severus wonders what had transpired between the ages of nine and thirteen that Harry himself had been unaware of. What natural force had caught Harry unaware and now exists inside as if Harry were an extension of the land itself. When they became lovers he has checked Harry’s body from head to foot and he can never seem to find any scar or odd mark to signify a direct point of entry for some foreign element to have gained possession, but no amount of careful examination or spell has revealed anything save for what Severus already knew: That Harry’s magic read the same as the ambient magic of the land itself.

No matter how many times Severus scours Harry’s memories he cannot find when it had happened. The day Harry had become one with the natural environment around him.

Sometimes when they made love Severus could almost perceive through his own senses the flow of rivers bringing snowmelt down from the mountains as his blood rushes down to his groin, the ebb and flow of the tides as they push and pull and crash over one another in the heat of their passion, during certain times of the year Severus can even feel the trees release their pollen as the two of them come to their own completion.

It is a very strange sensation that he cannot fully articulate just how he can sense it but his mind just… seems to know, or at least Severus’s own magic is acting as a translator of a sort.

Severus dares not tell Harry about this, for Harry seems to be blissfully unaware and would, utterly besotted, accuse Severus of being a poetic romantic. Again.

When Severus, cautiously asked if Harry, with his own acute magical senses, if had felt anything in Severus during those most intimate moments when the two of them came together, Harry admitted that from Severus his magic could sense the small electrical pulses of life and magic flow through his body, the movement of his breath as it nourished his blood and took away the excess his body did not need, and the stretch and pull of his muscles as Severus writhed in ecstasy. How the endorphins that are produced upon his release leave his body buzzing with content and how Severus’s kisses taste sweeter when sated.

Which is faintly alarming to always be stuck with the notion of Harry being able to sense Severus’s nervous system firing off pulses that move the joints between his bones, but thankfully also confirmed that Severus himself hadn’t gone mad if Harry was sensing odd things too.

Privately, because Harry would surely think him daft for making such comparisons, Severus feels like a primordial vertebrate rutting with the land. In the very old accounts there are references toward rituals that signify the fertility of the land being renewed by the fertility of the people. Did their ancient ancestors sense the same thing Severus now senses in Harry? If they were living in ancient times would Harry have been identified for his affinities and chosen to become a tribal shaman? Was there a ritual that needed to be completed using sex magic for Harry to appease the forces within him?

For the las question Severus has been doing his research, but in a frustrating twist the same Romans who brought native Britain wizards the wand had also seemed to erase or rewrite exact details of what they encountered in the Isles to suit their own agendas. There is plenty of literature that exists on the subject… the problem lay in the fact that it was all written up by out-of-touch wealthy monks and Roman conquerors who had no desire to study anything. Merely call it heathen and move on.

Since it is still Harry he is making love to, still Harry who writhes and moans under Severus’s touch, with the added comfort that Severus cannot even sense a direct malicious threat nor even a sentient consciousness to the foreign presence… he is begrudgingly fine with Harry as he is. Begrudgingly. For the wilds do not have sentient consciousness, they simply are. Merely a force of nature with no ability to care for human affairs. Provided the land does not envelope Harry into itself as nature, being a force and not an entity, is prone to just do without any rhyme nor reason, Severus can be fine with it. Not happy because he does not understand how it works or how to keep it from hurting Harry (yet), but he is fine with it (not really but there is not much he can do about it).

Harry himself had looked at him oddly when Severus asked him, once, after Harry had spent some time complaining about some hippie cult followers who claimed to be Christians who knew the true word of God through listening to the trees talk and they had come to recruit at the university… if Harry ever heard the wilderness speak to him. Harry had said that the complex systems that supported Earth’s biology, and the tilt of the planet resulting in cycles of the seasons, and the forces driving global weather just were. It existed. It did not think or speak. It was a force and consequence of living on a planet. Perhaps some believed in divine forces but Harry is secular for a reason, and that was because he was not required to privately believe in anything theological or practice spirituality if he did not want to, especially not after the hell and a half one stupid prophecy had made of his life, not even if the fates or gods believed _in_ him.

Which was fair enough Severus supposed. Given Harry’s experience with the fates.

Harry wouldn’t likely believe in any unknown forces trying to draw him back to the wilderness. Perhaps it is that lack of belief that will protect him.

“You’re going to wind up sending Hedwig off at an indecent hour at the rate you are going.” Harry teases with a grin. “What’s so fascinating down there that’s gotten you thinking so much?”

“Flower stamens.” Severus replies honestly, taking a long slow lick of the pollen that has beaded down and making Harry arch his back in delight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since JKR's magical world leans pretty heavily on... the "traditionally upper crust" kind of English attitudes toward blood-ties and family names relating directly to your worth, a relationship between a staunchly traditional London English wizard and a non-wizard from a more non-English Native Celtic Isle background is going to involve a lot compromise and knowing when to choose you battles and when to just let the other person believe what they wanted because it would be next to impossible to explain some things in a way that won't completely spook the Englishman, or make your resident self-proclaimed atheist think you've lost your mind, because while Harry does practice local magical traditions he's not religious. Especially where topics of destiny or invoking Merlin as if he were a deity is concerned.


	3. Why is the bath water the color of milk?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More slice-of-life fluff.

Harry has no idea why Severus keeps calling all non-wand magic “wild” magic.

It is mystifying because Severus understood more than most any other wizards that not all magic was all about wands or Latin-based spells inspired by the Christian-Roman era. Harry had taken great pains to explain the differences between tech-magick, mirror magick, storm magick, the differences between magic and magick, rituals, rites, little things you did as you go in daily life, how to use one’s body as a conduit for energy and how a lot of magic related into the realms of science…

Yet the man still calls it “wild” magic. Not even to poke fun at Harry, Severus legitimately believed his words when he romanticized non-wand magic as “exotic”, or “of another world” and other such hogwash. Still separating wizards wand magic as “civilized” and everything else as “wild”.

Hermione advised him not to let it frustrate him too much. Apparently the same thing still happens back in Australia with all the non-Native people (not just white people funnily enough but a lot of ethnicities with imperialistic or colonial cultural attitudes) still seeing the Native cultures as “ _ooo look how alien their mystic voodoo mojo juju bees is compared to what we grew up with_ ”. Sometimes you have to admit defeat after ages of trying to get high society colonizing types to understand that “different” does not equal “alien”. If they had their hearts set on the concept of the wise/savage/innocent/barbaric/all-knowing Native being of something “that is not of this world” and other such xenophobic rot… then there is nothing one can do to change their mind. At the very least Harry’s Severus wasn’t being a complete monster about it so that is a win at least.

She says that once someone reaches adulthood tolerance or even understanding cannot always be forced through long explanations. Sometimes, if you loved the stupid wizard or white guy, or Japanese person enough, you just had to live with it until enough exposure to you and your culture slowly began to sink into their thick skulls and they eventually knocked it off with the whole romanticizing thing. Hermione had to deal with worse growing up from her adopted mother who is Japanese and sometimes (although he tried very hard not to) from her adopted father who is a _white_ Australian citizen. So Hermione knew what she was talking about when she told Harry that Severus was actually not a lost cause at all so long as Harry had enough patience to explain it and let Severus study it until he has been satisfied. Much to her own surprise Severus even listened to her, which according to Hermione rarely ever happened when dealing with wizards. Or the English hoity toity types.

To his credit Severus threw himself into studying every square inch of non-wand magic and even went to the trouble of taking the really important bits and having the kids at Hogwarts learn them. He wasn’t perfect at understanding the culture and history, but he was able to grasp the how’s and why’s of the basic fundamentals and he is a quick learner when presented with something new to master. Though why Severus kept insisting that Harry be the one to write huge books about it and lobby with the Ministry to create a division of official study into the “wild” magical ways was…

Silly. Just plain silly.

Sweet, that Severus took pride in him, but still. Silly.

Magic that millions of ordinary people practice, and which is so varied and diverse that the mere idea of having just one woefully limited division of official study on the subject of non-wand magic is… like if someone tried to say that wand transfiguration, charms, and tea reading, were all the same thing and should be studied and taught as if they were all the same thing and had absolutely no differences in their distinct practices.

Severus’s rather naïve idea was that Harry could grow one division into multiple disciplines… or however the Ministry organized the study of magic.

Harry knew from experience that the Ministry only wanted to have a mysteriously powerful Jesus figure to go gaga over for their own political gain and resolutely refused to take Harry’s detailed explanations on how he did things seriously unless an already established and credited wizard-approved authority vouched for Harry. It happened so often that if Harry had made up a list of esteemed-looking wizards to bring along for the rare occasion he had to talk to others of their inbred xenophobic kind about magic outside of their limited understanding.

So save for emergencies it just wasn’t worth trying. The only reason why Harry did teach what little he was able to the wider wizarding population was because it made Severus happy to see Harry at least try to connect with the world Severus loved deeply despite all the bad that it brought him.

The oddest thing though is that despite Severus’s stubborn wizardry nature, there is something of a cunning folk about him. Most wizards are incapable of using magic without wands because they simply refuse to visualize any other way of doing things and therefore they refuse to even try. Severus on the other hand understands that if another way is possible then there is nothing to stop him from mastering it and improving upon it. Making it part of his own practice.

He may sometimes be a bit of a dense wizard, but Severus is far from a useless one.

Harry is amused by the fact that despite himself Severus acted more like a cunning folk man than a wizard sometimes, perhaps Hermione had a point. Harry just had to have a lot of patience.

…

“Why is our bath water the color of milk?” Severus demands to Harry who is currently rinsing off in the separate shower cubicle.

“It’s a healing detox bath sweetie. I’ve forgotten to wash that new wizard tunic before wearing it and the anti-doxy powder they sprinkled on it in the store has given me a terrible rash. I’m rinsing myself off before taking a soak.” Harry says, turning off the shower and cautiously stepping out of the cubicle.

“What is in this cheesecloth bundle?” Severus demands holding up the makeshift bag by the string that had previously been used to anchor it to one of the faucet handles. The liquid that is dribbling from it is a transparent herbal green color.”

“…Plants to steep in the bath?”

“ _Tea_?” Severus snaps. “You are wasting perfectly good _tea_ for a _bath_?”

“They are plants you mostly want to put on the _outside_ of your body sweetie.” Harry sighs, boldly squeezing out the water dribbling from the bag, then bending down and using his arm to churn the bath water, the liquid turning a pale pastel purple in the places where it mixes thoroughly.

“Harry that is a transitional reaction. What did you put in there?” Severus’s voice sounds a little panicked as he yanks Harry out of the water.

When Harry calmly explains the full process he gets the feeling that he is in for it when Severus makes an incredulous noise.

“You are brewing a potion in the bath and _you plan on using your bare hands_ _to stir it_?” The older man hisses.

“It’s not a potion sweetie, it’s just bath filled with things that will help me heal.”

“Which is a crude potion.”

“…It’s a crude _solution_ that will help leech the allergens from my skin and heal the irritation.”

“Which makes it a crude potion.”

“I really would not know what the right term to call it is, seeing as how I am not a wizard and that is not my specialty, what I do know is that it works on open sores.”

“Well this _is_ my specialty and I know a potion when I see one!”

“Yes sweetie.”

“You should have come to me. Clearly if you can’t classify it then it has never been properly studied. Who knows what the effects will have on you!”

“Well now is your chance to first observe, then study. Because my skin hurts, it’s never done me any harm before, and once this has mixed properly I am soaking innit.” Harry declares, quickly bending down to resume stirring, which makes Severus cuss, pull Harry back up, and summon one of his large cauldron stirring sticks, forcing Harry to sit on the toilet lid until the man had finished stirring the mixture in precise patterns that Harry was pretty sure were important for more dangerous concoctions. It takes a little while for the man to then run a few tests on the resulting bath mixture before, hesitantly and with great trepidation, allowing Harry to dim the lights, set out the glowing stones for a relaxing atmosphere, and slide into the warm bath with a groan. Severus even leaves for a few minutes to put his gear away.

“What’s that big lump of rock for? Some sort of ritual component?” Severus demands when he wanders back in.

“It’s charmed to glow for ambiance.”

“Then why choose a rock and not a candle?”

“It’s tradition.” Harry dismisses, hoping Severus will just let him soak in peace. His skin has the familiar tickle-faintly-painful-but-in-a-oddly-good-way fizzle feeling wherever the sores cover his skin and the room smells like his childhood, he had been young enough when he had come under apprenticeship that someone always read him stories to keep him occupied and out of trouble as his skin was given the chance to absorb the bath solution and prevent infection, and he could just about hear the voices telling him the old stories.

“Hm.” Says Severus, right before he turns back on the light and begins waving his sparkling stick about and muttering incantations.

No such luck then.

“This is not a ritual sweetie. The rock is not necessary, I just like the soft glow.”

“To use a stone instead of a candle is always significant. Since you are clearly oblivious to what may be transpiring I must observe for the sake of your own safety. Are there any folk stories or songs relating back to the use of the glowing stones in any vaguely magical setting?”

“…No. I was told wax candles were expensive and had a high tax on them back then. So they were forced to use the conductive qualities of the crystal rock structures to hold their magic long enough to cause a glow. ‘S how children learn to channel their magic without wand aids, there are plenty of stories about children dutifully practicing their- why are you writing this down?”

“So it shall be replicated in a controlled environment.”

“…For a healing bath?”

“As well as for the glowing stones. Stay put so I may observe your bathing ritual in full after I request the elves take this to Professor Flitwick for analysis.” Severus says, swiping a glowing crystal.

“Oi!”

…

“It’s an old wives tale sweetie. One that got picked up by the hippie movement and had gotten its meaning skewed out of context so utterly completely.” Harry sighs as they settle down for a romantic candle-lit dinner.

“Yet there is old historical evidence of human beings becoming one with nature, turning into trees at will and such.”

“Nymphs share a common ancestor with humans sweetie, but what you are talking about isn’t nymphs so much as it’s a combination of humans showing signs of turning into manifestations of concepts because there is so much raw belief put behind their name or the natural occurrence of a child adapting to the ambient magic around them. And as far as I am aware neither scenario has ever happened at the same time and even then manifestations based on once living people are… rare because it has to be a belief so old that the original living human person has been all but forgotten to the sands of time and replaced by a complete myth. If a ghost ever met his own manifestation he’d be unable to recognize himself things would have changed so drastically.”

“…Harry, Granger says that cultures such as the ones found in Hawaii have deities they worship whom they consider to be extremely powerful humans who are also deities in their own right.”

“That is a little outside my expertise sweetie.”

“But do you not see the parallels to our own world?”

“That… you have your beloved Merlin and the founders of a rich-person’s prep school? What is your point?”

“Do you not think that you might be turning into a manifestation?”

“Dear gods I hope not. The image people will project of me would be downright obnoxious.”

“I mean while you are still living.”

Harry stares at him for a long moment as he chews his salad.

“Mnnn-no. I’d be in lots of pain if that were to happen, those unlucky souls tend to wind up with the manifestation ripping them apart from the inside if it isn’t managed or at least the manifestation isn’t conquered by the resolve of the human half, because the human half never matches up with what people desperately desire them to be. Besides what you are describing is more… nature interacting with a human as an extension of itself. Or a human being somehow liminal in nature and the boundaries are blurred around him from a very young age. But more likely the old wives tales were talking about hedge witches who do that sort of thing intentionally, so I wouldn’t put too much stock into- Severus?”

Severus is eyeing something behind his shoulder with a frightful intensity, but when Harry turns to look there is nothing to be seen but the darkness of a moonless yard.

“Is it possible for someone to be an accidental hedge witch? For instance if there was something… in the natural world that… desired to use a cunning man as an extension of itself.” Severus asks out of the blue.

“Not unless that particular thing in the natural world wants to risk annoying the witch!” Harry scoffs. “We aren’t nearly so harmless Severus, we may all have come from Earth’s primordial seas and thus we all have the Earth woven into the fabric of our very beings, but that would hardly excuse such rudeness to assume that just because it isn’t human that it has the right to mess with a witch without risking grave consequences! Our species as a whole do not take kindly to parasites.” Harry hisses, and there is a promise in his tone. Sure some fools were into the whole kumbaya hippie nonsense, but nature wasn’t loving nor forgiving, it just was, and that kind of thinking got many people killed.

Or worse than killed.

“What if… a cunning folk was more ingrained with the natural elements around him.” Severus persists, still eyeing the window behind Harry.

“That’s just common sense.” Harry shrugs. “Our world isn’t a safe place, you either adapt to be in tune with the elements or you die, simple as that.”

“So you admit that you are one with nature.”

“In a very practical non-hippie way, yes… why?” Harry turns around to squint at the window. “What has gotten you so spooked? If something has gotten into the yard just tell me what it is so that I can knock it on its head.”

“I could have sworn-” Severus eyes Harry a little uneasily. “That… there were little lights flaring up over by the garden’s lanterns.” The man finishes lamely.

“Oh that’ll be the doxies and beetles or other pests going up in smoke when they get too close to the lamps. They give off a glow as they go up in smoke at night, but not during the day or when the moon is in the sky, too bright.”

“Ah.” Says Severus still uneasy for some reason, he spells the curtains closed with a sharp flick of his hand. “Gratifying to hear.”

…

“And this is how you adorn your Patronus charm like a protective shell of armor.” Harry says while gesturing to the antlers of light sprouting from his head and the thin glow that covers his body, as he instructs his young godson Teddy and niece Victoire on how best to protect themselves from creature attacks should they happen run into a malicious one.

“Oh huzzah! Potter is actually making use of his wand for once!” Severus calls as he walks up the back path towards them.

“What wand sweetie?” Harry asks after accepting a kiss in greeting.

“…What do you mean what wand?”

“Well you said that I had been using my wand but I don’t have it on me.”

“…But you are wearing your Patronus.”

“Yes, and?”

“One can only summon a Patronus charm with a wand.”

“People don’t need wands to summon a Patronus sweetie.”

“…”

“What?”

“Where is your wand Harry?”

“Back at the house, in the pocket of the wizard robe I wear when I’m going about in your country. Why?”

“…You need to take your NEWTS.”

“ _This again_. Why?”

“How can one so powerful be so oblivious?”

“What? I’m just doing what is normally done by people who have to deal with damn dementors in their garden!”

“This is why the magical world is reduced utter madness, lack of education at every turn and revolutionary techniques being left undocumented-” Severus begins to rant.

“Teddy, do you know what he’s going on about? Because I am very confused.”

“I SPARKLEY!”

“Very good Victoire.”

…

Some days it takes more patience than others.

XXX

“You’re going to need to convince Harry to write these things down. This wasn’t in the last books he published.” Complains Draco as he watches the children learn spells from their uncle Harry.

“He does, he just refuses to share it out of fear our world will destroy itself with us all attempting to best each other in a quest to become more powerful. Attempting to get him to publish an uncensored spellbook is like pulling teeth.” Severus gripes, pouring himself a refreshing glass of cucumber and mint infused water. “He was horrified to discover just how rabid his fan club got when I finally managed to get him to write the first series of spellbooks, he’s refused every request of attending a signing or tour despite his editor’s begging pleas, and he’s been far too embarrassed to publish anything without having nearly half-a-dozen co-authors from our world to hide behind. Not to mention his constant insistence that completing his studies from muggle university is far more important than contributing to our wealth of knowledge.”

“We are hardly likely to ban anything he has written after everything that had transpired.” Draco unconsciously touches the beginnings of a scar that pokes up over the collar of his shirt. It had taken the magic of both Harry and Hermione to keep Draco held together until Severus could arrive and use his medical knowledge to save his life. Even so winters still make his whole body ache.

“The odd thing about all of this is that unless he makes an effort to learn about a certain spell all wizard wand magic looks and sounds the same to him. He has trouble understanding the nuances or why we speak Latin to cast and not any other language.”

“I mean… it does work for him, to speak Welsh instead, or just plain English.”

“Yet not for most everybody else.” Severus complains with a sigh. “Even to this day he will do something like attempt to brew a potion in the bath and look at me as if I am an utter madman for identifying it as a potion and not as what his people would call an herbal healing bath. It is almost as if we do not come from the same Island country, the way he interacts with the world is so entirely… different than anything I have ever encountered before getting to acquaint myself with him properly.”

“How do you two manage it if the ways you see the magical world is so different?” Draco asks, he often wondered this, in between wondering how the hell the two men had managed to get together in the first place. When Draco first heard that the two had gotten together he had thought he had misheard and then when he saw the two of them kissing (more like snogging quite scandalously half-naked up against a wall) he had been convinced he’d been seeing things.

“He willingly shares his world with me, and in return I share with him the aspects of our world which do not pain him or cause him fear.” Severus gets an absolutely besotted look upon his face. A look which never stops being shocking to see on the formerly miserable potions professor, Draco wonders if he will ever get used to seeing it.

“I like to think that he and I create our own sense of normalcy by integrating the best parts from both our traditions. It takes a great deal of compromise and he can been downright exasperating with his obliviousness… yet somehow… no matter how much time has passed, it just works.” Severus sighs, his voice was as if he tasted warmed honey on his lips. Absolutely in love.

“Why did he draw runes on the windows with…?”

“Soap.” Severus supplies.

“Yes.”

“I did that. He’s been attempting to master mirror magical spells and one of the side effects is that his reflection in the window will move of its own accord for when we have our date nights on the new moon. He has been attempting to map out the shape of his magic in order to attempt some form of meditation or another that is supposed to better control the paths his magic takes through his body, but it only appears to work when he is distracted or his mind is relaxed. It took me ages to find a way of proving the phenomena to him without him assuming it was unauthorized trickster creature that he needed to hunt down in the dark of night in winter and give a sound thrashing to.”


	4. Rambling about Percival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry recalls his odd relationship with Percy and how, in his own quiet way, he's actually his second favorite adopted brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit rambly but it made me feel better to write it this way after a long week.

When Harry was first adopted Percy had been the most quiet about the whole thing, so Harry tended to gravitate toward him when the noise from the others got to be too much. Percy’s room was the quietest in the whole house and Harry liked to curl up beside Percy’s desk with a blanket and some tea and just _be_ for a while. His hair had been slowly going back to being fully black instead of being peppered with shocks of white and the color was just returning to his skin which came with the benefit that Percy pitied him enough to leave Harry be.

Of course Percy had oodles of questions because this was the famed _Harry Potter_ curled up in his room like a sad little refugee, and in turn so did Harry. Percy became his favorite answerer of all of Harry’s questions because he was never condescending about it. Like, of course it made sense to Percy that Harry had never heard of _Beatle and the Bard_ , Percy never wasted times scoffing over Harry’s lack of knowledge or acting as if Harry was somehow faulty for not instantly knowing.

Harry loved Ron very much but the boy never seemed to learn that Harry _not_ knowing something that all wizards grew up with was to be expected and not be surprised about every single time. “Wizard culture cannot be absorbed through the skin Ron, stop acting all surprised and just _tell me_ already!”

Or “I was raised in the muggle world Ron. How do you keep forgetting this?”

Percy’s very first question was telling of who he was as a person, since he immediately asked why Harry had been daft enough to run off from the protective care that Dumbledore had placed him under. Percy, who grew up learning to be able to trust all adults, could not imagine a situation so bad where running away was ever a sane option.

To which Harry, trying not to get mad about the comment, gave Percy several memories for the older boy to see for himself.

Percy had to spend some time having a silent conniption because not only was Harry extremely justified but the fact that Dumbledore himself had known was just all sorts of upsetting. Which had led to Percy wanting to take the old man to task but of course the rest of the family objected and Percy was really, really not happy about that. Percy had also wanted to do something about all of the other kids that Harry talked about who could not afford to go to Hogwarts and instead attended alternative programs and the apparent impossibilities magical folk ran into in becoming a part of wizarding society if they never attended this one school.

Nobody really listened to Percy. Harry did but that was different, Harry was the new traumatized baby of the family who mostly liked to listen to Percy talk about the thickness of cauldron bottoms because it was something so mundane that it helped Harry’s sanity to listen to. Yes, Percy has always been loved, but as the boring middle child who did as he was told because he was old enough to remember the war and his uncles and people he knew dying and being scared all of the time, he got overlooked a lot.

Harry didn’t hang out with Percy like he did the rest of the family, instead Harry let Percy explain the wizard culture to him with as little judgment as Harry was able, and in return Percy actually _listened_ to the reasons why Harry didn’t like wizards all that much because of the terrible ways they treated people just because they had wands and an acceptable _English_ bloodline and everyone else _didn’t._

English. Not Irish, or Scottish, Cornish, or Welsh. The “sacred” twenty-something were all wizard English upper nobility classes, which was different than regular English like how the Potters had been. The Ministry mainly only hired those born in England, of “sacred” twenty-something inbred lineage, to be in the top tiers of government offices and instead of acting as a centralized government for the areas outside of London and Hogsmeade, they instead acted more like roaming gangs of wealthy thugs. Yes, not all who manned the Ministry outposts in Wales, Cornwall, and northern Scotland (not Ireland, they kicked the Ministry out after the potato famine for being asses about the whole thing) were horrible people but they also did not have a checks and balances system to curb corruption. Locals _hated_ Ministry officials and would rather put their faith in muggle police than waste their time hoping that they’ll be taken seriously by the wizard cops.

Provided they were lucky and just snubbed and the wizard cops don’t rob them blind for trying. That was also a risk.

Basically anybody who was not rich enough to go to Hogwarts let alone wanting to part with their beloved children for such insane long stretches of time, were considered to be lesser by simply existing.

And Percy actually believed Harry about this!

Well, to be fair Harry provided the memory evidence to Percy, but at least Percy, unlike a good chunk of this supposed “Order” (terrorist group), never tried to make up excuses to make it out as if wizards were just _better_ so it was justified or pat Harry on the head as if he were a simpleton and tell Harry in voices reserved for talking to the very stupid that he was just mistaken and blowing everything out of proportion. It was only to be expected given the lowly ruffian muggles that Harry had been running wild with.

It got to a point to where his adopted parents had to put their foot down and bar certain members of the Order from speaking with Harry because they were giving Harry the wrong impression about wizards in general. They both sympathized with Harry’s plight, but unlike Percy they knew that it would take more than gumption and a can-do attitude to change things. Which harry had supposed was fairly more realistic outlook than Percy’s, who had assumed that if enough of the right people became aware of the situation that things would change.

Of course that did not happen for Percy, but Harry appreciated the effort. Even made Percy a small chocolate lava cake as a congratulations on getting such a high position job right away. Arthur was worried as hell because that kind of instant promotion just did not happen without nefarious things behind the scenes, but that didn’t stop Harry from being grateful for him trying anyway, nor did it stop Harry from occasionally sending Percy apology sweets when shenanigans happened Ron’s fourth year and Percy’s boss turned out to be a creep, a terrible father, and a criminal all in one go.

Harry would have checked in on Percy in person but at the time Harry had been neck deep with trying to keep Hermione from killing Ron (her number one nemesis and occasional ally), comfort a very distraught blond kid (Draco) who got turned into a ferret and nearly murdered by the son of Percy’s old boss who was also a death cultist, comfort a very distraught grown man wizard Minister by assuring the man that, no, of course the scary bad man was not coming back, snipe at the Warlock for being a jerk and trying to scare people with ominous omens without concrete proof other than daring to look _wounded_ that Harry did not have a scrap of faith in him.

Harry then was playing referee to a three-way glare contest between his adopted brother (Ron), the traumatized son of his adopted family’s archnemesis who had just become Harry’s new best friend (Draco), and his first best friend who still had a grudge against both boys for getting on her bad side in the past and she still hadn’t forgiven them yet (Hermione). Then there was ongoing drama with Ginny the heartbroken teenaged fan because Harry had not turned out at all like the mythical boy she had been expecting and he was loudly proclaiming to be gay and that she was his cute _little sister_ , even though she never wanted another brother in the first place (just a fairytale boyfriend), so she was pissed off all the time. This had been going on ever since that summer but when Harry’s life suddenly got super busy it was especially cumbersome, and as a result she kept getting detention from Snape at practically every turn which did not help to endear Harry to her one bit. Then there was Severus himself who was silently freaking out because his tattoo had vanished, and he had glued himself to Harry’s side because the last time he took his eyes off of Harry, he had brought back an unconscious Death Eater who had been oddly singed everywhere, and what had looked like a battered looking furry snake caked in mud who had turned out to be one of his missing snakes.

Not helping Harry diffuse the fighting it should be pointed out. Just acting as a guard. To prevent Harry from pulling more of that kind of shit on him again.

On top of all of this, _then_ the next thing that happened, for some _insane_ reason, Harry was put in charge of organizing the search party for the real Moody when sad cultist boy’s tattoo scabbed over and was not only falling off but actually looked pretty infected, with angry red veins all around it and oozing black puss and he, in polite terms, “ _died of a broken heart”_. Meaning he had escaped, murdered his father, and in the ensuing confusion of his failed attempt to break into Snape’s potions cabinet, consumed all of the belladonna berries that could be found in the greenhouses and all of the adults were too busy blaming each other to be useful. So the Warlock had pointed to Harry and said something along the lines of “hey magic cops, do as this kid says for he was raised by nature in the savage lands and has mystical wisdom, you shall do this for I am the modern Alcibiades and what I says goes”, and the magic cops all do as the old guy said without question and Harry immediately despaired for the future of this stupid country.

Putting a child in charge of a life or death situation. Despicable.

Harry did his best, constantly referring back to Snape and Kingsley who seemed to be the only two competent adults present (even if they were playing along to the old man’s whims). They did save Moody in time at least. Very much worse for wear, but alive.

It hadn’t even been February yet.

Harry had been amazed he hadn’t dissolved from exhaustion.

The only small mercy Harry had that year was that he had managed to evade the sad cultist’s attempts to kill Harry off by forcing Harry’s name into the wizard death Olympics. Amazing what one can do with just a salt circle, some grains of rice with intent and charms imbued into them, a sticking charm for the ceiling above where that death goblet had been, and new twin brothers who happily offered their assistance. It became even more hilarious when nobody took notice of the salt and rice circle on the ceiling until years later when Severus was walking by and had said “Why is _that_ still up there?”

It got very busy.

Of course by spring break Harry hadn’t really had the chance to sit down and talk with Percy about how he was handling things, because the thing with Ginny had come to a boiling point on the second day back home at the Burrow. She having been at the phase where everything **_must_** come at extremes, awareness of others having feelings that are just as valid as her own not quite computing yet, and bad love advice had been followed… to disastrous effect.

Harry knew that she was coming from a place that she would, thankfully, eventually grow out of, and that even though she had said she was madly in love with him, she wasn’t. It was the same kind of crush little kids get on their favorite pop star or a character in a TV show, and like a lot of teenagers and children it was upsetting that their expectations did not meet reality. On an intellectual level Harry knew that this was normal for kids growing up, that he had gone through a similar heartbreak when they killed off Tasha Yar in _Star Trek,_ _Nash Bridges_ destroyed Harry for a while because every woman he had a crush on always got killed off, and again when his favorite boyband idol turned out to be a violent drug addict in real life, and he knew his feelings were the last thing on her mind because she still hadn’t been able to see him as a person instead of an abstract idea. No different than the fictional character Harry had cried his eyes out over or the boyband singer who turned out to not be nearly as Sauvé, or charming, or perfect as his stage persona had let on.

Still it had hurt, a lot, all he wanted was a family and the only use she saw of his very existence was to be reduced down to not a person but a caricature of a concept in someone else’s fantasy of snagging a famous husband. She had a very specific idea of who he was supposed to be, and how he was supposed to act, and how the rest of their lives were supposed to play out because she had this idea in her head since she had been seven or eight and she was too invested in preserving her comfort zone to consider that maybe Harry was never the boy she had dreamed of. In fact the reason why she got very angry with him ever since his first summer at the Burrow with the family was because when she was expecting him to be the Savior of her dreams… he… Hadn’t. Then she got even more angry when she couldn’t bully or shame him into being the sort of person she had convinced herself that he secretly was on the inside. As if a lot of scolding and a love confession could somehow _fix_ him.

Years later of course she would grow to be mortified by her twelve-to-sixteen-year-old past-self and apologize, but it still took a long while.

So in the end Harry didn’t have the time to properly talk to Percy. Even though Percy moved into Charlie’s and Harry’s room (Charlie was never home save for Christmas so he didn’t mind sharing) for the remainder of the break and all of the next summer to act as a disapproving guard against the threat of Ginny hexing Harry in the middle of the night, they were both too depressed to really want to talk about why Percy quit the Ministry.

During the day Harry hadn’t much time to catch up either, Severus took up just about every ounce of Harry’s remaining time that wasn’t spent with friends or the rest of the always bustling Weasley family. Some days of the week Harry even had spent sleeping over on Severus’s couch, because, Severus being both an academic and a spy, there was a great deal of necessity in making use of Harry as a wealth of information for Severus to further his research. As well as teaching Harry about wizards, furthering his education.

Then the Warlock had gotten himself killed early that autumn.

And Harry got the hell out of dodge.

Harry hadn’t expected to move in with Percy at age fifteen. It came as a complete surprise for… everyone.

Then again Harry also hadn’t expected Percy to take Harry up on Harry’s half-not-completely-serious offer to become Harry’s acting guardian parental figure and move into a quiet “muggle” flat in a city somewhere in Wales, far away from Hogwarts but that was close to Harry’s alternative schooling program that wandlers were sent to when they couldn’t afford Hogwarts nor the exurbanite wealth requirement that was required for those outside of a Purebred family to find a suitable place in wizarding society. Like the Potters had back in the day, before they decided to try to blend in and began breeding (such a demeaning term but that is the term the Purebreds called it) with their first cousins who were the children of their parents’ siblings and everyone shared the same grandparents, then things began to get complicated because at the third generation of first-cousin incest, your grandmother was also your aunt and genetics-wise you were a clone of your own great-grandparent and… it made Harry’s brain hurt. For a long while the male members of the Potter family exclusively married a first cousin who generally also had the same surname of Potter while their excess daughters tended to be arranged (the girls had no say in it) to be married off to the top hoity toity Purebred families to consolidate wealth, and that… just ow. The Potters really should have stuck to buying their way into respect.

Molly was sad that her two boys were leaving the nest so soon after they had just came back home, but told Harry to stop apologizing because Percy had not been doing really well ever since the _incident_ that had forced Percy to quit his job the previous year and move back in with his parents. He wasn’t doing horribly, horribly, since the summer of the year they had captured Harry for the third and final time, Percy had discovered his mild interest in Harry’s computer coding book and other tech-mage magics. While it had not been Harry’s specialty nor his interest he had wanted to test the sincerity of his adopted parents’ claims that they were pro everything “muggle” and at the age of thirteen Harry couldn’t think of a better test than to ask them to help Harry go to the book shop and find the most non-wizarding thing Harry could think of and then for Harry to use his very basic knowledge of the subject to inscribe the coding like one would any other written spellwork and make the old telephones that Arthur had in his collection of Muggle curiosities into a sort of walkie talkie device.

Harry had ended up the one being shocked when the entire family had thought that was the coolest thing they’d ever seen. Percy was the only one who got interested in using the computer coding strictly for computers though, and when Percy quit his job towards the end of Ron’s fourth year after months of working his butt off at the Ministry, he had used what little he had been able to save up and started to take beginner computer workshop classes.

Molly had grown especially worried since Percy stayed out for so long during the days and evenings even though his classes did not last for that long and the extra income Harry’s adoptive parents were getting in welfare for taking care of Harry as their ward paid for the extra classes She feared that the stress from _the incident_ was driving him to drink even though she had yet to find proof.

No one had specified what the _incident_ had been, Harry had to be hastily assured by Arthur that Percy had not been sexually assaulted and then Harry had to have an awkward talk with his adopted father about _why_ that had been Harry’s first assumption, and what certain Ministry officials were known to get up to in certain lower class non-inbred neighborhoods and immigrant housing areas, which soon led to a surprise visit by uncle Remus and Kingsley Shacklebolt where Harry was given chocolate and had to give an official statement along with several memory vials and afterward he had an even longer conversation with Molly where Harry had to assure her that Nana Lindi (may she rest in peace) turned the creep that had tried to forcefully give Harry candy, and then started chasing and hexing Harry when Harry had stabbed the guy with a hat pin, into a toad and then cursed him three times over with various embarrassing and horrible ailments just to be thorough before obliviating the guy. Yes, Mrs. Yan was saved in time for the other time Harry had seen an Aurar behave badly, though she is still pretty shaken up. And as for the other, other time-

It went on for a little bit. Unsurprising to only Harry the Ministry refused to have someone as influential as The-Boy-Who-Lived stand trial against some wizard from “an otherwise good family”. Severus threw a fit and tried to use this as an excuse to bring Harry back to Hogwarts for Harry’s own safety then threw another fit when he was told that Harry and Percy were off muggle apartment hunting.

Harry elected to not push the matter of the mysterious _Percival incident_ after that exhausting experience, especially since Percy didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and especially, especially since Percy had figured out that Harry will back off if Percy asks Harry awkward questions. Besides, they had apartments to hunt for and Harry had to introduce Percy to Mistress Nishta and the more tolerant parts of the wider witch communities in Wales which kind of completely blew Percy’s brain to smithereens and Harry kind of ended up regretting not saving the introductions for after they secured an apartment because Percy was experiencing twice the culture shock and had a little trouble staying present.

In fact Percy had already gone through at least two minor breakdowns before they even began apartment hunting. The first had been when Percy had gotten the first Gringotts welfare check for partial guardianship of Harry and he had taken one look, asked his mother how much the percentage she and his father were getting for adopting Harry, added up the sum, realized that Harry’s aunt was an even more absolute monster than he had previously thought, and spent half a week sitting in a corner because it was more money than he had ever seen addressed to any Weasley in his entire life. The second breakdown had been when Molly became in need of some new cookware as well as new seedlings for the garden and Percy tagged along as she and Harry made a trip to one of the undercover non-wizard magical market venues. To which Percy became easily overwhelmed by the fusion of modern mage-tech and traditional witch magics and ended up having to sit with a book and something calming to drink in a quiet café while Harry and Molly finished up their shopping day.

It ended up working out, Harry already had a basic idea of what they wanted from the list he and Percy had drawn up beforehand, and because he had asked them nicely the goblins were happy to give Harry advice on ideal liminal locations for magically active folk within their budget range that provided both privacy and security. So when they were viewing a nice high-rise location with a balcony owlry that came pre-furnished with two beds, a couch, a telly, and basic cookware, Harry knew that he had to play a little dirty in order to get Percy to sign the lease quick before he seized up in a panic attack from everything being so new.

“What do you think Percy? You suppose that you’d like this to be your new room?” Harry had gestured to the master bedroom.

“My room?” Percy had seemed completely baffled by the notion.

“Well, you are the oldest. Ron grumbled something about the oldest always getting the bigger room when Bill and Fleur stayed over for Christmas. Is… that not a universal rule?” Harry had asked innocently.

“Oh it’s a rule. Written down somewhere at some point I suspect.” Percy hastily claimed, stepping forward into the master bedroom almost territorially. Looking around as if imagining himself living there.

“It is within our price range and it ticks off all the things on our list, all we need to do is review the contract but I’ve got a good feeling about this place.”

“…No itchy feet?”

“…No?”

“Sold.”

“I don’t have a precognition ability, for the last time!”

Percy had given the lady who was showing them the apartment a worried glance, but she just smiled and produced a paper spell from her sleeve to summon a ball of light. “We are all witches here sir. Your contract will have more specifics for what sorts of magic will be allowed for the safety and privacy of the building.”

“Magical people live here?” Percy had been blown away by this, though Harry did not know why exactly. Not when Harry had been showing Percy that magic users lived _everywhere_.

“He grew up in the wizard sectors so all of this is new to him.” Harry explained quickly. “He’s had to leave the Ministry and he’s stuck with me as his guide so this will be a fresh start for him. He’s been taking classes in computer coding since last year so we’re hoping there might be something innit for him in his new life.”

“Well I certainly hope it goes well!” The woman had said with such positive support that Percy had to blink in confusion. “Tell you what, I can nip down to the front desk and loan you a few guide books so that you’ll know where to start in your search for a new life, and while I’m gone, my coworker Gene can stay with you two if you want to review the contract here and ask some questions about our security wards. There is still three hours until the next scheduled showing. You know what they say, the first step to leaving the world of wizards is to have a safe home base to begin with!”

“Yes, we would like to review the contract here, we have nowhere else to be.” Harry jumped in shocking Percy even further.

Percy had a lot of questions to ask about some of the foreign non-wizard terminology, as well as plenty on the fact that people running _away_ from the wizarding world was so common. Thankfully, the lease agreement wasn’t too long and before the first hour had passed Percy had the presence of mind to sign before his brain broke down on him. In fact he had to go off and lie down while their paperwork was being filed and their keys brought to them.

“This is why I had asked the goblins for a reference list of potential places.” Harry had explained from over the back of the couch. “Liminal placement properties allow for protected transition and if you go through the goblins to act as co-signers and as references they’ve got a quick move-in same day as signing policy.”

“So… we can just… live here? Today? Just like that?” Percy had been baffled.

“Just like that.” Harry confirmed, although in reality they merely had enough _money_ to make such a thing possible, lower income places tended to take about a day or three of processing. “Of course we’ll have to call mum and dad and call for takeout for dinner tonight, but other than that you can go to bed right now and let yourself decompress from today if you want. I understand that this has been very overwhelming.”

“…Toothpaste…” Percy replied with his brows furrowed in concentration. “Harry we don’t have a change of clothes… or soap… my- _our_ things are still back at the Burrow.”

“It’s all in my backpack.” Harry had proclaimed plopping said object down at Percy’s feet. “Mum helped me pack you about a week’s worth of clean clothes and all of our basic essentials. As for myself everything I’ve ever owned in your world is in my former school trunk, and I’ve shrunk that down and taken it with me so I’m at least all moved in just being here.”

“Ah ha.” Percy had replied faintly.

Of course Harry still had his other things that were still stored safely in Nana Lindi’s, may she rest in peace, cottage. The things that were his, and the things he had inherited from her as was tradition since he was Nana Lindi’s official apprentice, but that was more of a slower transition to move from the cottage over to the flat. Percy may have treated Harry no differently than Harry had been treated at the Burrow, but Harry never forgot that Percy is a wizard and that the flat was visited regularly by various wizards ranging from those from the Weasley brood, to Percy’s old school chums, to Curious Hogwarts staff who had heard rumors and popped by for a look. Therefore each new book or item Harry brought back to the flat became a sort of test to see how Percy would react, if he would flip his lid or start handing things over to the other wizards.

Percy had raised a brow at Harry’s growing library but remained startingly respectful since he knew that these were the things that had come from someone Harry had cared a great deal for even if she had insisted that Harry was a serf in the same breath that she told Harry to wash his hands and face because there was treacle tart waiting for him on the table. Even telling Severus to skiv off when the man had tried to recruit him into reporting back directly to him whenever Harry brought something new home. Apparently Percy had developed the opinion that Severus was already in a position to ask like a civilized man and not a sneaking spook.

Mostly Percy kept his focus on improving his computer skills so that he could find suitable work, as it had turned out the reason why Percy had been staying out for so long was because he had been trying to beef up his resume by doing small odd jobs until he landed himself work at an eco-company in Cardiff. Most days the two were far too busy with school (and dealing with Severus), hanging out with family and friends, and with work to have time to get into too much trouble.

Other than Hedwig managing to find, and get pregnant by another wizard’s snowy owl, and Harry’s unexpected health problems (because surviving from horrific childhood abuse and stress from wizards trying to actively murder you came with consequences for a growing body), home life for Harry and Percy remained… oddly quiet. If there was any drama it tended not to happen between them and arguments remained small but brief because Percy was the eldest with a legal adult I.D. and therefore by sibling law had seniority and also the right to veto any of the stranger or more inappropriate names Harry tried to place upon Hedwig’s children (“Stop closing your eyes and pointing to random names in the baby naming book! Rosemidella is weird and a terrible name to give to a gir- boy? Why in the name of Godric Gryffindor is that listed as a boy’s name? Where did you _get_ that book?”).

In probable Gryffindor fashion Percy did not exactly get along well with Severus. Not in the same way Ron didn’t get along with Severus, because at least Percy managed to earn the right to be treated to Severus’s cordial side, for Percy’s beef with Severus was all due to the fact that Severus kept… showing up without invitation, disrupted Harry when Harry was doing homework in order to discuss wandless magic, or disrupting Harry’s homework time in order to try to argue for Harry to return to Hogwarts and get ministry job just like everybody else.

“I was not hired based on my merit.” Harry had once overheard Percy snap at Severus when the two had thought Harry had been napping instead of pressing his ear to his closed bedroom door.

“All that work to get a perfect record of Outstandings on my NEWTS and Crouch only gave me top position because they wanted to keep around what they thought was the biggest fool in the family so that if my father did anything they didn’t like they could use me against my own family. I worked myself day and night to get projects done and it turns out that I wasn’t impressing anybody, I was just the fool everybody was shoving their own projects at so they could get all of the credit! I had to find out about all of this from that captured criminal Harry had discovered who had been polyjuiced as an Order member while _he_ was under truth serum, and do you have any idea how often the lady from down in customs tried to spike _my_ tea with truth serum so that she could find out any secrets that I knew about Harry? If I had not grown up with seven crazy brothers and one mean little sister and knew how to keep my wand up my sleeve to banish little teeny levels of water at a time, or the rubber hose and water bottle trick we would have had to rescue Harry from the zoo! She actually tried to prove that Harry was no longer human enough to be considered a person! Nobody wanted to talk to me when I didn’t take Crouch Senior’s side after the whole mess came out and because I am a Weasley I haven’t been able to find any other work at the Ministry without people trying to use me to get at my family! Everything is run by the Ministry! All of my skill sets were left useless outside of working at the Ministry! Why in Merlin’s name would I convince Harry to go back if there is no-“

The rant went on for a while. At least until Harry started to worry that Percy would talk himself into blowing his top so he decided to “wake up” early and did his best to pretend that he didn’t see how Percy was angrily chopping up vegetables while Severus looked faintly dazed.

To say the least things got a bit awkward when Harry and Severus had gotten together when Harry had been eighteen. Percy already didn’t like the fact that Severus kept popping over in the evenings, mornings, and weekends, but after that one fateful day Severus began spending the night as well, often spooking Percy in the middle of the night when he’d see the older man come out of the loo.

“What the hell do you two do in your room all night?” Percy demands after Severus has finished having breakfast with them and left for work.

“He likes having somewhere quiet to get away from the job he hates.” Harry had not-lied with his ears flaming bright red. “He doesn’t get his sleep interrupted by emergencies while he’s here.”

“He’s got more clothing stashed in your wardrobe than the clothing that you yourself owns!”

“Does he?” Harry had asked in genuine mild surprise.

“Harry!”

“Did you know that they’re making him sleep in the same bed that the Warlock used to sleep in?”

“Tell him to get a new one!”

“He’s also looking at refining the school curriculum since it’s been a while since it’s been updated, so he’s using the stuff I inherited as research to see what is relevant to the modern day.”

“Didn’t you also inherit like a cottage and a bunch of country estates? Why can’t he stay there if he wants peace and quiet?”

“He likes my cooking.”

“Harry, he spends an average of four to six nights a week here! He doesn’t just eat your food, he helps himself to what we have in the refrigerator! He’s always brewing a potion on the stovetop, he hogs the telly remote, he uses my shampoo, he doesn’t slip into house slippers and he tracks dirt everywhere, he has his own toothbrush, he steals all of the leftovers for the nights he is not here leaving nothing for us, he looms in the background to watch me when I’m working or having a conference call, his avid research has forced you out of your own bedroom desk and you are forced to work on your university work at the kitchen table- Harry he has moved in and he is the flatmate from hell!”

“Hmmm.” Harry had said, taking an extra bite of his food to stall for an answer. He hadn’t realized that Severus was invading so much as he was hiding for a few hours at a time from having to be the boss to a job he hates and in a place that brings him nothing but painful memories.

“You know, the grandparents bought up a muggle place out in the Welsh countryside to try to hide from death cult murderers. Maybe I should see if it’s still standing.”

“Please do!”

It turned out to actually be in fantastic condition and a lot bigger than Harry had expected. After just a little renovating to get the lead pipes out and bring everything up to code Harry used his summer break to properly ward the whole property. For a few weeks Harry was in a strange situation of living in two places, but Percy assured him that with his recent raise and with Severus moving out, Percy could afford to live on his own. Though Harry was welcome to stop by whenever he wanted since, unlike _certain_ individuals, Harry was a pretty decent flatmate.

Severus, who was told that Harry was grown up enough to want his own space (he wasn’t going to start a rivalry between the two fully grown wizards by telling Severus the truth), happily obliged to ensure Harry got settled in and as a result moving all of Severus’s things from Percy’s flat on over to the new place. Reluctantly allowing Hermione the honor of ensuring Harry’s personal library was properly ordered based on an easy-to-organize system so that Harry could find what he was looking for without spending days having to search through every book. But only because she had the time and she was really, really good at it when she wasn’t being distracted by… being surrounded by a room full of books. For months she lived in there, the house being originally a Georgian-Victorian era wealthy person’s home it came with secret rooms and even more secret loos so Hermione got to have an actual room hidden behind a bookshelf and expanded into a full-out suite with the use of wizard space. It saved her a bunch of money on rent, seeing as how she had been paying Harry back by taking care of the library, and the work kept her occupied while they were still rebuilding the wizard equivalent of their university that Hermione had her heart set on attending, especially since Harry gave her the Potter family seat in the Wizenmagot and she had _plans_.

They ended up having to take turns in dragging her out so that she could get something to eat… take a shower… call her mum who was getting worried about not hearing from her child for long stretches of time…

Actually, now that Harry thought about it he wasn’t completely sure that Hermione had ever fully moved out of their library.

“Sweetie, did Hermione ever fully move out of the library?” Harry’s mind snaps back into the present.

Severus glances up from where he is adding spices to the chili con carnie and gives him a _look_.

“What? You know that I never go near her room because I respect her privacy, and she never comes out of the library unless we drag her out. Plus, before we even moved in you called dibs on the library as your domain along with the lab. How am I supposed to know whether or not she’s just visiting or if she’s… still half living in there. I’d ask her but she’s not likely to define spending most nights of the week in our library as living in it.”

“I believe that you have just answered your own question.” Says Severus cryptically.

“How so?”

“As you speak you hold within your hands a feeding bowl for her cat.”

“MEEEAW!” Complains Crookshanks, as if on cue. Butting his hard little head into Harry’s shin.

“Ow!”

“Speaking of Granger, you have reminded me that I should best draw her out and make her wash up for dinner lest I find her passed out upon the floor again from thirst and hunger.”

Of course, Harry muses, when it came out that Harry and Severus had been, as the wizards called it, _courting_ one another (a term that made Harry feel a little warm and fluttery on the inside), Percy had mixed feelings.

Justifiable mixed feelings.

“Just spending the night you said. He just wanted to get away from Hogwarts you told me. Only taking a kip in your room all night.”

“It wasn’t a lie. There was a reason why he showed up at our place more often than me at his place in Hogwarts.”

“You said that he was just taking naps!”

“Again, not a lie. He took lots of naps.”

“In your bed.”

“Yes.”

“With you in it.”

“We mostly just cuddled! He was still recovering from the injuries he sustained from the almost wizard apocalypse and I wasn’t feeling very healthy either to be perfectly honest.”

“Cuddled.”

“Yes.”

“ _Him_?”

“He can cuddle!”

“Is that a euphemism for-”

“We cuddled!”

“Harry.” Percy had sighed, looking tired. “Level with me, is there a reason why you suddenly started acting strange around our couch in the flat?”

At that Harry felt his entire face grow warm, not able to look his older brother in the eye.

“I’m going to have to get a new couch.”

At that moment Severus _chooses_ to enter the room. “If you desire to get rid of it I shall be happy to buy it from you. It holds a great deal of… _fond_ memories.” The man says with a leer completely unashamed to reveal that he’d been listening in despite Harry’s squawked protest and Percy’s sour glare that holds the promise of revenge sometime in Severus’s immediate future.

Harry knows that at the slightest hint of someone disapproving of their relationship Severus will double down and go out of his way to be offensive because that’s how he protects himself against people trying to hurt either him or Harry. By scarring them for life until they give up and leave. Added with the facts that Severus still had a visceral bias against the Gryffindor dorm, and he never quite knew what to make of Percy in the first place.

While in contrast Percy had spent many years having Severus invade their space because Severus had at first wanted to annoy Percy into making Harry go back to Hogwarts where Severus could better protect Harry, and then when Percy, who is a smart wizard, did not rise to the bait and Severus did not know how to proceed. He didn’t even seem to realize that Percy had declared his own sort of semi-polite secret war against the man. Not a war designed to hurt, just one to make sure Severus never got a true upper hand. He knew Severus just never fully knew how to deal with Percy and while Percy was the most reserved of the Weasley brood that was far from a weakness.

They could and did get along, Severus considers Percy to be the most refined of all of his siblings, and Percy respects Severus a lot as both an authority figure and as a person. Yet when they sought to get on each other’s nerves they did so. Like adults, but still.

Still, Harry supposes it’s better than what Bill has to deal with between his spouse and his protective family. Harry doesn’t fully understand this weird protective aggressive dance that happens between spouse and family but as long as there is no bloodshed Harry won’t interfere. It was unexpected that out of all of the family Percy is the one to take on this role, but he’s just grateful that the verbal sparring is as mild as it is, given what Fleur has to deal with from both Molly and Ginny. At least with Severus and Percy if it gets to be too much they’ll tell Harry about it and then Harry can arrange a peaceful compromise, Bill has complained to Harry that some days he’s half tempted to move to France because the worst Fleur’s family ever does to him is coo over how handsome he is and ask him to do odd jobs around her parent’s house like put up a shelf or help her granddad make homemade wine.

Harry has no in-laws, or if he does Severus certainly doesn’t like them enough to have them in his life anymore. Molly seems to have this secret rule that sons-in-law and anyone crazy enough to handle Ron or the twins are to be treated like gold, while daughters-in-law are to be despised because no woman will ever treat her baby boys right. It had apparently been the case in the Prewet and Weasley family traditions going back generations, since Purebloods married daughters in as a sort of business agreement and you could never truly trust a witch for if she objected to the arrangement her husband could die a terrible accident and she’d inherit a portion of the estate, while men… they got to keep their family name, the children, the wealth, everything, the husband did not have to defend himself against anyone or anything. If he didn’t like the wife he could divorce her or she would be made to stay at home while he got himself a mistress and never came home. Either way the fault would be socially placed upon the woman and not the man.

Harry did not know how this translated into daughters-in-law not being liked by the mother of the groom since they had the least protections. He had asked Draco who had sighed deeply, and told Harry that it depended on the family dynamics and that it wasn’t an actual rule, just an excuse matriarchs of families used to show dominance and to make sure their kin were being treated right. Yes, witches in traditional Purebred marriages had no protections unless they were like, sole heirs to their own family fortunes and didn’t have any brothers, or if, like many Potters had done before they became gentrified, they specifically made out in their wills to divide the wealth up amongst the children equally. Molly just hated Fleur because Fleur is French and doesn’t like Molly much either herself, Draco’s own wife hates his mother with the heat of a million suns because Narcissa did not leave Lucius when she had the chance or take Draco away when she had the chance and Astoria cut all ties to her own parents for the way they had treated her and her gay sister so Draco never met his mother-in-law not even at the wedding because they weren’t invited, and that the whole deal between Severus and Percy was more between the two men and that Harry really shouldn’t worry about it unless it came to blows.

No, really. Harry should be thankful that what he had to deal with was as tame as it was. It could be so, so much worse.

Harry supposes that is true given that Percy is no slouch when it came to being a complete bad ass when the occasion called for it. Like when the whole almost-wizard-apocalypse-battle-royale happened. Harry was inclined to call it a war but he kept being assured that it hadn’t really been. Not really. Yet people couldn’t ever agree on what it was exactly. Other than unexpected and really scary, they all agreed on that much at least.

Whatever it was Percy had been a bad ass. While also still somehow managing to be the responsible brother, in making sure that Harry took his A-Levels exams _before_ they did anything else. Which had seemed weird at the time until it was all over and all Harry had the brainpower for was to sleep for five months and have a healthy and controlled meltdown where family and friends were there to make sure he felt safe and loved.

When Harry passed his A-levels with flying colors Percy heaved a massive sigh of relief, before immediately suiting up to help the rest of his family retake London using mage-tech magic, which in actuality wasn’t exactly the best choice of magical style for combat situations, but since the enemy had never encountered tech-based magics before (or any other magics that did not involve wands, Latin, and Tudor era understanding on spell theory) it worked very handily as an element of surprise and made Percy look like a badass in the process. Ron said all sorts of rumors sprung up around such “strange” and “exotic” magics, most oddly involving Percy having disappeared off to some Himalayan mountain to be taught by a grand master hermit. Which, again, tech-mage magic is not combat magic, so why the wizards thought it was some karate kid super-secret technique…

The twins were probably behind this.

Harry’s eyes pop open, no longer feeling sleepy enough to keep drowsing on the edge of sleep.

Very quietly Harry lifted the spare wand Severus insisted he keep at his bedside and lowered his arm over the side of the bed, out of direct view, and gave it a little swish as he whispered as far under his breath as he could: “I softly summon thee magic phone.”

“Hrn?” Severus grunts, he’d sleep through the radio alarm clock but never when Harry wanted him to stay asleep. It was like a sixth sense.

“Lafayette is chasing after his sister Croquette.” Says Harry, which is not necessarily technically a lie since Hedwig’s youngest daughter loves to hop after anything that levitates if it comes across her line of sight, and it very well just might, or equally as likely she was getting up to trouble even at that very moment anyway. Hedwig hates it because she’s too young and too vulnerable to be left on her own and because Croquette is so used to the pampered domestic life she has no self-preservation instinct, so Hedwig usually sends one of the child’s older siblings after her. It wasn’t normal owl behavior Harry was pretty sure, but then again normal owls also didn’t deliver the paper.

There is a reason why Severus has kept the lube in his pocket for the past couple of weeks and has begun putting Hedwig on birth control. Nothing is a more of an serendipitous mood killer than an owlette tripping over her clumsy fuzzy feet as she stumbles in, then demands food the second she sees them.

“Hmph.” Severus grumbles, hiding under the covers because the owlette also loved talking at him when given half the chance.

She is still a baby with her grey down still growing in with red skin still showing through and all awkward proportions so she is _not really_ cute enough yet for Severus to find it to be charming. Instead it’s a little off-putting, especially at night. Severus has called her _the little felted doll that looks like it was designed for inflicting curses_. He’s still sweet to her, because baby owl, but she is very much a little brat for such a tiny thing. Crookshanks took to never venturing out of the library whenever he was at the house because of the little menaces Hedwig’s children could be when they were at this age.

Harry isn’t nearly as quiet when the phone he had modified at thirteen lands softly in his hand and he has to quickly get it under the duvet out of sight of Croquette so that if she is chasing the phone she won’t be daft enough to try to climb up on the bed to demand food. Dialing in the code that will patch him through to the twins in the process.

Percy had been the one to figure out how to create a network of sorts between the phones that Arthur had collected and put little charmed mirrors in the phones that had screens so that the family could do face-to-face talking if they wanted to (and Molly required it when speaking to her). The downside was that there was a limit of nine people you could call within a network and when dialing you couldn’t repeat numbers, you could not dial less than three digits, and you had to dial in a straight line for some reason. Of course Ron had been ecstatic until Percy had refused to make any more and he realized that they only had like six phones, and then when Severus had peered into Harry’s mind he had immediately confiscated the one that Ron had been sharing with Harry and Ginny (he could never find the one the twins had because the twins thought that playing keep away from Snape was _hilarious_ ) and Severus in a really cruel twist enforced the rule that Ron had to call his mum every Saturday evening and Ginny every Friday, while Harry was all the rest of the week’s evenings…

 _“Harry?”_ Comes the voice of one of the twins.

“Hey Fred?”

_“Yeah?”_

“Was it you two who sent the wizarding press that anonymous tip that Percy had learned tech-magic from a mysterious secret civilization hidden in the cradle of the Himalayas?”

In reply Fred broke down laughing which is twin-speak for “yep” so Harry hangs up and braves peeking out of the duvet to wiggle the wand again, quietly telling the phone to: “Go back.”

Harry isn’t certain what Severus was thinking of this whole situation but Harry can feel the older man jerk and sit up very quickly.

“Did you just use your wand?”

“I assure you that my underpants have remained firmly covering my bum and I’ve been as limp as a sleeping clam all night.” Says Harry as he hastily tosses his wand into the shelf inside his bedside table.

Harry hides back under the covers when Severus turns on the lights, clamoring over Harry to see what made the clattering noise at Harry’s bedside.

There is a very long silence, Severus’s body shifting and settling around Harry’s cocoon, his long fingers methodically untucking Harry from the swath of blankets.

“I’m not going to hold it over you Harry.” Severus soothes, kissing Harry’s brow. “Don’t hide from me love, you know I won’t. I shan’t ever hold it over you.”

“’S habit.” Harry mutters, trying not to feel like a fool now that he’s calmed down a little.

“Then why are you cowering from me? Hm? Why hide from me?”

In all honesty Harry did not know. “Couldn’t get the thing to work otherwise.” He says instead, which also isn’t a lie because wands, and more specifically the memories of the type of really bad wizards who would get really happy thinking that _The Harry Potter_ was coming around to turn into just as big of a monster as they were, really makes casting with the thing difficult. Focus being off and all.

“Will you talk to me about it?” Severus requests in a low rumbly voice, making a point to nuzzle Harry like a big cat, which is hardly playing fair because Harry was a complete sucker for that sort of treatment even though he did not know why other than the fact that it made him feel warm flutteries on the inside.

“I was just… thinking about how different Percy is now compared to when I first met him. Then I realized that those articles in the paper about him kind of sounded like the plot to those Kungfu movies our brothers used to watch when they visited the flat, and I knew I couldn’t sleep without getting an answer. So I called the usual suspects.”

“To which you summoned the device with your wand.”

“You know that I get stage fright when I’m watched.”

“Your phobia worries me.” Severus tells him, and it shows on his face.

“I know that I didn’t have any problems when I was younger. I don’t know why it’s happening to me now. It just-…”

“Yes?”

“You know how Molly had me write down what scared me off of using my wand when people could see me, you saw how long it got but you pointed out that a lot of the stuff on the list were things I was dealing with since forever? I don’t know why it’s so hard now, but not back then, and only in some cases but not all the time. All I know is that it isn’t you. Some days… I just… can’t fight through it is all.”

“Speaking of Percival could this perhaps stem from you being unable to practice unless he was at home due to your at the time under legal age status?”

“Positive.” Harry speaks exasperated.

“Yes, but consider the timing of which this phobia began to take root.”

“After Neville came back from being almost murdered.”

“…Really?”

“I started not casting spells with the wand beginning that day, yes. I was too ill to go to class and too much of a wreck to even remember to keep the thing on me let alone to be able to use it.”

“…Not one spell?”

“Not one spell for months.”

“Months?”

“Well at the time I had thought that I was in too much of a state to channel my energy through the wand, but over time it just got harder to make the conscious switch from what I was used to doing normally, to using the wand.”

“…Not one spell?”

“Percy was there when we first realized that it was a thing with me, he was the one who took my wand in to get looked at and then worked with me to figure out what was going on. He was also the one to tell you about it if memory serves me right.”

Severus blinks in incomprehension. “I was given the impression that you had developed this during your time away from Hogwarts, not while you were still attending school.”

“Nope.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

“At Hogwarts?”

“Yes.”

“To be honest, the thing with the wand was the least of my problems at the time. I didn’t even think about it until long after I had left the Burrow and I had finally calmed down long enough to compute the fact that the issue was not getting better even after the scare had passed. I mean I could still summon my magic to do stuff and I need to focus in order to get my wand to work anyway so it wasn’t a pressing issue. I had just assumed that that it was a side effect of me being in a state for the millionth time since the old guy got his hands on me when I was a helpless baby. You know, stress building up until the body can take no more, that kind of thing. I mean… it happened to me before, just… never for this long.” Harry shrugs.

Severus curses under his breath.

“I’ll try again tomorrow, but I can’t promise that I’ll be able to do anything on cue.”

Severus kisses him, long and sweet. “Perhaps I could romance you into it. If you are made to be relaxed a-“

“CHEEEEEEP!”

“…”

“…”

“Are we absolutely certain your familiar did not copulate with a demon?”


	5. No Need To Add To The Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite being very kind, Severus reflects that in hindsight Albus had actually been unnecessarily cruel.
> 
> Yes, in this i've made Aberforth a "squib", he can still do magic, and he is powerful, but he wasn't born with the genes to be able to work with conventional wands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For me personally I just find the whole story about the dude's little sister to be a bit... not well thought out? For one, attacked in what way? What was she doing unsupervised? How did a gang of muggle boys get the drop on a witch when canonically magical children can protect themselves from non-magical dangers such as Neville bouncing when he was flung out an upper floor window? Why were the magical or muggle authorities never informed about the band of dangerous muggle boys? Why go after them with magic at all? Why was she never hospitalized and properly treated? I mean, I know that this is set in like... late Victorian early Edwardian period but they had suitable healthcare for those who could afford it and the Dumbledore family could afford it. Why is it that there are never shown any competent or nice muggles in the books, why are they always vilified or made out to be dumb?
> 
> So here's my take on it.
> 
> Also, the whole Albus looking after a child thing... I'm pretty sure Aberforth was the one raising her while Albus was off with his boyfriend.

Their first meeting had been alarming since Harry had been so distraught by being rescued by the Order and thrown into Hogwarts at the age of eleven that he lived in the school infirmary instead of the dorms because he lost all appetite and would collapse at the drop of a hat. The shock of the magical world being too much for him to handle all at once.

Then one weekend, two weeks in, the day before Albus was set to sort Harry into a house, Harry had vanished.

They feared he may have perished in some horrific manner or had been eaten when he ran away from them. Yet the mermaids said no children were found in the lake and Hagrid was positive beyond doubt that the boy did not resort to fleeing into the forest, it took _years_ to work out how he had managed it, at first they had thought he had smuggled himself out during a Hogsmeade weekend, or used the hidden tunnels. They were deeply worried someone had kidnapped him or he had perished because he had seemed so… fragile when they first found him. There had been a horrendous screaming noise coming from around Ravenclaw tower on the same day of his disappearance and what with Pettigrew being discovered the day after that many feared the wretch had gotten to Harry first.

It wasn’t until three weeks after Harry’s vanishing act that they had gotten definitive evidence of Harry’s survival: Xenophilius Lovegood had been in South Ireland attempting to… find evidence for some odd creature or another… when he happened upon Harry carrying a lamb in his arms over by the ruins of an abandoned stone cottage and managed to capture a photo of the boy startling at the sight of a camera-wielding wizard, before side-stepping to the right and disappearing behind a metal pole for what had once been a clothesline.

It should be noted that there was nothing for Harry to hide behind. The pole was only a few centimeters wide and Harry would not have been able to hide behind it even if he sucked his stomach in, abandoned the lamb in the grass, and stood sideways. He should have shown up on the other side!

But he didn’t.

This was also around the same time the Order had collectively realized that they were in over their heads. Of course they knew something was odd with the boy, given his propensity to go into a dead faint every time Severus drew too close, but that was understandable given when Severus had caught him Harry had been quietly scratching like mad at his feet on a street in Cokesworth and Severus had not asked questions when he got over his shock long enough to sneak up behind the boy and nabbed him before quickly apparating away on the spot so as not to draw suspicion from the muggles when they heard a frightened child screaming bloody murder. They had all just assumed that the boy would… grow out of it once he realized he was in a far better and much more civilized place than the horrible muggle world.

 _This_ was many different levels up from that kind of odd. A pitiful fainting child they could deal with, a disappearing into thin air one… not so much.

They had… dubious help though, an unlikely source giving them clues of where to look, due to his habit of trekking about odd places where most wizards never bothered to travel to, Xenophilius had managed to take one other photograph of Harry spotting him when they had crossed paths yet again in the Hebrides and vaulting over a fence to get away. Of course the man claimed that he had seen Harry countless other times but Xenophilius also accompanied these claims with other claims about Harry having been raised by Centaurs, or ghosts, or wolves, so it was difficult for the Order to take him seriously, and years later, under the influence of firewhisky and a warm summer’s night Harry grumbled that other Cunning Folk called him Mowgli or jungle boy for ages after those papers were published, and the other kids would break out into songs about Bear Necessities and teaching an orangutan how to make fire.

Severus really wanted to know the context to that one, alas, unfortunately Harry clammed up once he was sober and refused to get inebriated ever since. Which only made Severus desire to know more if Harry was so desperate to keep it a secret to the point to where Severus never came across a reference point for such a thing in the boy’s memories.

Harry himself refused to speak a word about his escape to anyone until he was nineteen, and because Severus was barred by oath against divulging anything he found while reviewing Harry’s memories he could not warn the rest of the staff that Harry had figured out that no one paid as much attention as they should to those wearing Hufflepuff colors. Harry, with the aid of his wild magic and one Hermione Granger, had changed the color of his hair to blond, placed a glamour over his dark skin to turn it to a pale tone, and dressed himself as a Hufflepuff girl to hide himself amongst the other children during meals and free time, slept in a long forgotten secret tunnel he had found _somehow_ , when the faculty weren’t watching him, and bid his time until spring break rolled around so that he was able to follow Granger and the other students onto the train bound for London!

With a stolen broom that he used to jump out of the train bathroom window and fly away!

Reckless! …and suicidal.

Little wonder given how far they had pushed Harry. Severus may have been a willing participant but then again he had been anticipating a James Potter clone, someone who would require a firm hand and would be just as despicable. Not be of a fainting disposition, or exclusively speak a Welsh dialect the very little he spoke anything at all, nor be so unable to overcome the shock of being spirited off to Hogwarts that Poppy had to spoon-feed him nutritious broth because he had trouble holding down anything else. For that Severus did feel guilt, for the boy clearly was not faking and the horde of his goggling classmates had not helped the situation either.

It did not surprise Severus that Granger would have been the one to rescue the boy.

Severus knew better than to confront Granger about it. She could “ _accidentally_ ” (this is a lie, she did this on purpose) wandlessly summon up bolts of electricity and manipulate the constant drizzling humidity around her to cause small localized storms when she got angry. By then Severus had seen enough of Harry’s memories to know better than to touch upon _that_ subject.

If anything the girl deserved a box of chocolates and a sympathetic ear.

Instead Severus had wisely allowed Harry to mediate an agreement between Severus and Granger (chocolates were offered as an olive branch) because at the time she had hated Severus with the heat of a thousand suns and had feared that he was doing horribly inappropriate things to her friend behind close doors. It was implied that she was planning to castrate him and force feed him his own prick the second she found definitive proof that he had ever so much as laid an indecent glance upon the boy.

When confronted by the stupider members of the Order when the truth came out Granger had given them all such a _scathing_ glare and proceeded to remind them about the “special” boarding schools back in Australia that the filthy British had set up all special for the Aboriginal people so that they could steal children from their families and do atrocious things in the name of “civilizing” and “making them into proper witches and wizards”. Telling them about the day the Australian magical government had come for her, about the bogus claims they made to try to justify themselves in taking her away from her family on the reservation (even though in magical Australia they refuse to acknowledge that they had reservations, or Aborigines). How her birth mother had placed a spell on her as quick as she could because she knew the ones who were pale enough in skin tone would be treated better. How they had told her adoptive squib parents she was rescued from an abusive Mexican-Australian muggle family and while she may seem “ _wild”_ and “ _savage with her incoherent babbling_ ” with proper care she could “ _settle down_ ”, be “ _civilized_ ”, and the only reason why Hermione was in Hogwarts in the first place was because Australia was not safe! The Grangers were not fools, they knew she was not babbling but speaking a language of _some sort_ , and had figured out the rest pretty quick when her skin went from a light brown to a deep black that she was not a Latina, and that the place Hermione kept insisting she was from was already being paved over for development of a wizard neighborhood and there were protests because the Native people who once lived there _suddenly all vanished in the night_ \- and WHAT IN THE SEVEN HELLS WAS SHE SUPPOSED TO THINK WHEN A BUNCH OF RASCIST WHITE ENGLISH WIZARDS HAD KIDNAPPED A LITTLE BROWN BOY AND WERE TREATING HIM LIKE HE WAS A MISBEHAVING PET MONKEY WHO WAS BEING OH SO _INCONVENIENT_ FOR BEING PETRIFIED OUT OF HIS MIND-!

“I do recall that I had warned you all to not go there with her.” Severus had calmly stated as he handed out small jars of ointment to place upon their bruises from the small hail storm, as well as a balm for their electrical burns. “It is a topic that causes her great pain.”

“She’s not the one covered black and blue with-YEOWCH!”

“Drink your potion it shall help dull the pain. If a little pinch is enough to have you caterwauling then I daren’t imagine how much it shall hurt to put your foot into your mouth.”

It was miracle that the boy had survived the second capture given how even worse _that_ had been botched up.

What Harry refers to as his _third capture by wizards_ , Severus remembers how a devastated broken boy had regressed into the basest of animal instincts. The frightened heart wrenching inhuman howls or whimpers when he was approached or touched without advanced warning or permission had been so alarming that it was feared that he had fallen into madness. Albus had sorrowfully already given up on the boy after his disastrous encounter with trying to talk to Harry only for Harry to nearly die from sheer fright and developing an obscurus on the spot. Albus recounting with hurt bafflement that Harry’s hair had even turned white in places from the experience. The situation only being made worse when in the process of trying to move Harry to the safety of Hogwarts and away from any reporters, the boy escaped and had hidden himself inside an animal’s earthen den in the ground.

Severus half did not expect Harry to understand a word he spoke when he finally located the boy and ascertained that, thankfully, he was still alive. If a bit squished. Severus had still been grappling with the knowledge that this was James Potter’s son, but even at his worst moments he dared not forget that this was also Lily’s beloved child, the boy she had sacrificed her life to protect. Mostly Severus had been hoping that the boy would faint from the sound of Severus’s voice just as he had done at age eleven during the first… rather counterintuitive disastrous time they had caught the boy. It would make it much easier to levitate an unconscious body out rather than attempt injury with a struggling one.

To Severus’s surprise the boy actually spoke to him. And then to his horror he discovered precisely _why_ Harry had been reduced to such a state.

It was bad enough that Albus, a stranger who Harry had only known as the psychopath who put a man-eating dog inside a school filled with children, had restrained him in such a fashion, but Harry’s treatment under the hands of the medical staff was worse. They refused to explain what they had done to him when asked, refused to tell him why they had knocked Harry out, treating him callously as if Harry were a misbehaving monkey when Harry exclaimed his horror over discovering the freshly healed scar over his abdomen, and one nurse restrained him to steal keepsakes. Snipped a lock of Harrys hair and took a vial of his blood before taking pictures all while gushing about being close to _The Harry Potter_.

And then to top it all off Albus came in and restrained Harry to the bed, took away Harry’s voice, and began talking about death and all the horrible things that were going to happen to Harry if he didn’t do as Albus said… to which Albus had _meant_ it as a friendly warning from a wiser source to the errant street urchin whom Albus had thought required a firm hand just to get the boy to understand that Albus was on Harry’s side, perhaps at the time Albus had even thought it amusing before it had all gone horribly wrong, but within the context of Harry’s surgery experience it sounded like a horrible threat. And it had been far from amusing at all. More psychological horror really, this had been a boy who had been captured into a strange alien place surrounded by strangers he did not know and having undergone an operation without it being explained to the child beforehand what was going on.

It took a great deal of negotiating to get Harry out of the animal den, Harry had known that he was in no condition to run far without risking further injury, yet Severus had to make several consecutive oaths on his left socks, his ability to taste his favorite food, and that if he betrayed Harry he’d suffer from an incurable restless leg syndrome before Harry gingerly crawled out with some help from Severus when it became apparent the boy could not move his leg for it had fallen asleep.

He was dirty, tears streaking down his dusty face, shivering cold, grey from fright, and strands of his fine wild hair had indeed turned shock white from his ordeal. His left wrist had bitemarks upon it and it took Severus a moment before he realized that in his frightened state the boy had attempted to chew off his own hand before regaining enough of his wits to think better of it.

What pained Severus the most though were Lily’s eyes staring up at him, distrustful and accusing him of being a barbarian just like the rest of the wizards even as he hid himself under the side of Severus’s robe for warmth.

Suffice to say Hogwarts was not an option at that point in time and several people were quickly, yet quietly, charged with malpractice and put on an extended sabbatical which would eventually become immediate dismissal without references once things quieted down.

Severus made certain the boy was with him to witness at least _some_ justice being served, by yelling at the hospital staff, in order to better establish that their world was not made up of barbarians. Though even years later the traumatic event never fully left Harry and even as an adult he would hide himself if he caught sight of a medi-wizard’s uniform.

Then Severus handed him off directly to Molly and Arthur who took Harry in as a way to try to acclimate Harry gently into their world, with the added task of proving to Harry even further that they were not all barbaric savages. Something Minerva and many others of the faculty (Severus himself included because while he was a bitter man, he was far from stupid. It was not the son of James who kept fainting at the sight of Severus, the boy… Severus had feared, given his behavior, that the boy would jump off the astronomy tower or do something equally as rash) argued that they should have done at the very beginning!

Arthur had reported that Harry’s skin had remained an ashen grey for nearly three weeks and no matter what they did to bundle him up all nice and warm Harry was always freezing to the touch. Thankfully, Harry turned out to be remarkably civilized for a child who grew up as he had and immediately seemed to identify the Weasleys as allies. He took to dutifully aiding Molly around the Burrow with her chores and communicated with Arthur with many questions about their world and responded, albeit vaguely, about Harry’s past whereabouts. Reportedly there were a few sleepless nights with Harry awaking from crippling night terrors, but that was always readily soothed over by a hug and a glass of water.

He had not tried to run away even once. He was in fact actually a very studious, well-mannered, quiet but kind child. Molly even said that he helped out with the chores without needing to be asked!

Which only _proved_ that Minerva was right in that they should have been more gentle in bringing Harry into their world, and many of the faculty, not just Severus, feared for the boy’s sanity at the end of all of this mess. For Harry was clearly not fit for class and the Weasleys were against sending Harry away from home since both Arthur and Molly wanted to provide the boy with the level of stability not found in a boarding school.

Albus’s solution was to send Severus, Lupin, and Minerva to give Harry tutoring sessions throughout the summer and plop him down in class come fall anyway. Make a big show of it even.

“ _Politician_.” Harry had hissed in a curse when he heard of this. He allowed the tutoring because despite himself he was curious about wand magic, but made it crystal clear that he was displeased about being singled out as if he were a circus attraction all so that “The Warlock” could boost his own popularity. Harry had already gotten a taste of rabid fanaticism of grown up men and women acting like preteens seeing their favorite boyband and he was not at all down for dealing with a mob of the dreaded actual teenaged variety.

This made Severus laugh and earned him a painful elbow to the ribs from Minerva.

The first impressions of Harry’s learning abilities were… unexpected. Unless placed under direct instruction, Harry often forgot to use his wand when casting spells and got so frustrated by the Latin pronunciations that he forewent speaking the spells he cast, or when he did they were in Welsh or some other variant language. It soon became clear that he had been taught hag magic at some point, and he was highly proficient at wandless magic for a boy his age. Which was good… in that they did not have to teach him from the ground up what magic was, but concerning enough in that they decided to go above Albus’s head and recruited most of the rest of the staff to test Harry on his knowledge.

None of the faculty had ever seen Harry’s distinctive magical style outside of a few references made in pre-Roman magical archeology or hearsay from obscure journal articles on rural practices from the most secluded of purebred families who did not usually attend Hogwarts. All Harry had been willing to say about it was that it was what regular people did, and that not everyone could afford to go to Hogwarts so of course it looked different. Silly wizards, not everybody based their magic on Hogwarts magic, they had their own magics from home to learn about.

Then he’d refuse to elaborate, saying that posh wizards would not be welcome where he was from. The war y’know? Made people think that everyone from Hogwarts might kill them for the sin of living. They’d see the professors come from a mile off and pretend to be non-magical until they up and left. Everybody in the country had known someone who was killed in the crossfire of the Purebreds squabbling over whether or not they should marry outside of the family. The fascination of who was sleeping with who and whether or not they shared the same grandparents, that kind of thing. It’s fine and all for posh wizards from those faux nobility circles who can afford to go to Hogwarts and all but for everyone else it was more than a little weird.

Harry never had been able to grasp the nuances of the war. It did not help that Arthur had encouraged him so much by saying that, yes, Harry understood it exactly right. In most corners of the world the whole marrying cousins thing is for the nobility and is less so for everyone else.

Then came the bogart lesson.

Much later after recovering from the scare Harry would allow Albus the one delusion in believing that Harry had actually never been scared of a _lone little old man_. It was far from the actual truth, as the boy’s bogart proved, but once Harry got his wits back he wasn’t at all keen to show such a level of weakness around someone he _absolutely did not_ trust. Harry claimed that it was _politics_ he feared, politics that got his parents killed, politics that drove grown adults to try to murder Harry in cold blood, and it was hardly _his_ fault that Albus’s image was the chosen face representing the wizarding world’s political institutions. Sure, the Minister was the guy in the fancy office but Albus was almost mythologized into a sort of holy kinghood made up of an impossible sense of purity by the populace and given that people often put words into Albus’s mouth to support their own agendas and Albus being but one mortal man with two big jobs filled with responsibilities, he didn’t have the time to correct people every time someone lies and said that the Head Warlock had deemed it be so…

Albus acted as if he were fully convinced even if he knew better. On the really hard days Severus thinks that his former mentor often managed to reconvince himself that it was true that Harry feared not him but the gullibility of the wizarding populace. That he found a sort of comfort in Harry not trusting him on blind faith even when it did bother him that Harry refused to play into Albus’s plans for him, and always seemed to somehow know generally what Albus had been planning in the first place...

Harry claimed that Albus had a few tells and a terrible poker face, but they all knew that the boy possessed a low level of psychic ability, one that Harry himself refused to acknowledge because the daft boy loved science too much for his own good. Everybody learned to worry whenever Harry secreted himself away into a corner to begin to scratching like mad at his feet and thumbs because that always heralded that trouble was on the way. Especially when he would absently, not even consciously, echo any predictions of Sybil’s, because that all but confirmed that she actually had a legitimate prediction and wasn’t just blowing hot air. Harry is like a human barometer in the respect of Seer abilities, he doesn’t need to look into crystal balls or read patterns in tea leaves, some days all Harry has to do is go for a walk and he can sense events about to take place.

Or even sense intent.

It was never exact however, and Harry did not rely solely on anything abstract, but in Albus’s case Harry was eerily accurate to the point to where he could anticipate Albus’s plans within his plans and that concerned Albus deeply.

Severus had not known it at the time but later, when Severus had replicated the experiment and had Harry face his bogarts several more times, he could no longer deny the truth. Severus was forced to come to the conclusion that the real reason Albus was so adamite that Severus look into Harry’s mind and search out whether someone had planted ill-intent against Albus into Harry’s subconscious was because Harry’s bogart had voiced a prediction Harry had sensed about Albus’s plans for him.

For while Harry was unable to give prophecies like Sybil, Severus found that for Harry a bogart was able to translate his predictions into speech. Granted, it was limited to the condition that it had to be a prediction that _frightened_ Harry, yet despite this it remained eerily accurate.

When it came time for Albus’s will to be read (Harry had not attended the ceramony) Severus was not surprised to find he had left Harry with a puzzle to solve, with references to the tale of the three brothers and death, a closed golden snitch, and the elder wand in a box wrapped within an invisibility cloak. The will itself urging Harry to fulfill his destiny. For the Dark Lord was sure to rise again.

Except… by then Severus’s left arm had been free of any trace of the dark mark for many, many months. There wasn’t even the faintest outline or discoloration, Severus’s skin remained as pale and unblemished as the belly of a fish. There were tales of Death Eaters in Azkaban committing suicide in despair, and Lucius had been near hysterical asking Severus if he was _absolutely certain_ that the Potter boy had not done anything, had not been out of Severus’s sight for even a second!

Severus had been clever, deflecting blame off of Harry by stating that Pettigrew had been tasked with bringing the Dark Lord back and combined with him recruiting that bumbling fool Crouch Jr., who had been far more interested in taking petty vengeance out on Lucius by hurting Draco, it seemed very likely, or at least “Dumbledore had seemed to have known something about it”, that between the two whatever magic the Dark Lord had used to survive had been accidentally snuffed out. To put it simply: Crouch Jr. waited too long to complete his task in order to pursue petty revenge and Pettigrew had been unable to keep a houseplant alive while they’d been in school, let alone look after a recovering Dark Lord.

The surviving Death Eaters mourned, cursing the names of Pettigrew and Crouch Jr. and started bickering amongst themselves over who had been the most loyal until someone or five got murdered for boasting too loudly.

Severus left them to it. Relieved that the nightmare was over, but apprehensive of what they were about to find by solving Albus’s puzzle. For with no Dark Lord to vanquish, what could Albus have possibly wanted them to _do_?

It had taken Granger ages to suss out how to open the damn snitch and then once she looked inside it was to find a cursed ring that would kill those foolish enough to wear it. She was very positive about it being cursed because all of her own charmed jewelry reacted in repulsion to the strength of the curse’s malice. Severus personally oversaw Filius and William assess the ring, lending aid when his knowledge of Dark Arts were required. It was found, much to everyone’s horror that the curse placed upon the ring was of the most despicable variety; almost living on its own like a fungus it would devour living tissues and leave behind what was left to decay off the bone.

What was even more disturbing was that the ring matched the description for one of the three Deathly Hallows.

Meaning that with the presence of the wand and cloak they were witness to the three Hallows being in the same place for the first time in over a millennium.

Meaning that Albus had desired to draw Death itself into the room with them, or so it was said, for the particularly superstitious.

At first Harry had thought Albus had discovered one of the horcruxes Albus had mentioned to him once, claiming at the time that the Dark Lord had put a piece of his soul into one of the Deathly Hallows, but upon closer examination it was found that somewhere along the way the stone of the ring had been removed and replaced with a glass fitting, and using Granger’s charmed bell earrings to search Albus’s things to try to find something as powerful as the missing resurrection stone turned up its broken fragments in the fireplace in the Headmaster’s private quarters.

Which left the question as to why Albus would give Harry the cursed metal band when he had already neutralized the real threat. Why not destroy the band as well?

The obvious answer left Severus feeling cold all over.

Albus had meant for Harry to put on the cursed ring, and die while wearing all three Hallows. Become the Master of Death and die in the process.

But why?

Out of cruel spite for refusing Albus the pleasure to murder Harry himself? Or simply because Albus had believed in the Dark Lord’s return even more faithfully than his most devoted Death Eaters who had all long since given up? Severus could not say. The elder man often had said that Severus was far too attached to Harry and it would only make things harder for Harry to fulfill his destiny.

Or perhaps, more likely, Albus had fallen into a madness of some form. There had been no evidence the Dark Lord would rise up again to begin with, perhaps Albus had not come out as undamaged from the second war as he had pretended. Perhaps Albus had thought in his delirium that Harry must become Death in order to protect them all from an unseen, hidden enemy that Albus had been so certain was behind every shadow. What was the condition that Granger had coined when talking about Harry’s own problems? Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Yes. That was it.

Yes, that must have been it. Had to be.

Severus kept quiet about his realization. No need to frighten Harry or break Minerva’s heart even further. The woman was already beside herself from not only losing a mentor but also from what had nearly happened to one of her own lions. Even Harry refused to make the cheap observation that she wouldn’t have likely cared much about his own wellbeing if _he_ had been the one to survive the horrific encounter. He was very clearly tempted, but the boy kept his mouth shut and instead snarled at anyone who tried to be crass enough as to attempt to implicate her in the whole mess.

Harry’s natural first assumption had been that they were meant to snap the Elder wand into pieces, which of course they all objected to and as a precaution they had the sense to keep Harry at least several rooms away from the priceless artifact at all times, because Harry had not been joking and refused to swear that he would not do such a thing should the opportunity present itself. The mere sight of the Elder wand made his feet itch something terrible, Harry claimed that the wand’s magic was so obnoxious that it was _just asking_ to be snapped and set afire for good measure.

Thus that summer, when the ground was no longer frozen and they had investigated everything to the best of their limited abilities, in secret they buried the wand along with the ring in Albus’s family funerary plot, in the place of a body they had created a small marble effigy of Albus in the old Celtic style. They covered their actions by claiming that it was a “wild” wizarding tradition to bury an effigy and a few tools for the afterlife in the place of an actual body should it be impossible to retrieve the corpse, and since Albus was so very fond of Harry…

Harry had glared at them all for a week for that, covering up crimes and making up such blatant lies, but in respect to the bereaved he did not challenge it.

Somehow at the funeral Skeeter had gotten past security and began pestering Longbottom until Harry had heaved a disparaging sigh, and stood next to the woman, then sighed in despair again when she made a gleeful noise at seeing _The Harry Potter_ willingly submitting himself for an interview.

Harry had been remarkably sensitive to the bereaved mulling around nearby, not being fully capable of hiding his disgust but he at least took a great amount of effort in softening his open hatred of the elder man. Taking Skeeter off to the side so that the others could mourn in silence.

Despite the Order’s best efforts, in the days following the utterly disastrous incident some of the details surrounding Albus’s disappearance and death were leaked to the public (Draco. They could not prove it but it had been Draco), to which in the following months Skeeter had ran with and published a whole book about the dirty details of Albus’s life. Which made her both brave and cruel when she showed her face at the funeral not even a month after the widely successful trash hit the shelves.

Harry had come somewhat prepared, carrying on him an official written statement that Molly had made him write, to which he had been planning on dropping off at the papers after the funeral anyway. He conversed with Skeeter for a very long while about what he had written, as well as Skeeter answering the questions he asked of her about what she had found in the midst of her own research. Harry tried his best to paint Albus in a more tragic light rather than a psychopathic one. Which was incredibly hard given all the unnecessary torment Albus had put Harry through over the years.

When asked about what took so long with the interview Harry said that eventually he had to distract the woman by talking about something else. Skeeter was beyond blown away to discover that it had been his mother, not Harry, who had killed Tom Riddle and that Harry had to do a lot of explaining about _that_ one.

The cloak was spared from being buried solely due to its harmless uncursed nature, plus the fact that Minerva had cried when Lupin admitted that James had used the cloak while in school and she had begged Harry to keep his father’s heirloom. Harry had seen it befitting that Severus should be gifted the Hallow as an official belated apology since James was never man enough to do so himself. In front of the others Harry had claimed that as the new Headmaster and still current spy Severus needed it more, but in private the true sentiment was made clear. It would never make up for all of the grief Severus still carried for his lost childhood, but Harry was gifting Severus a small measure of revenge.

Harry, whom Albus had claimed to be so much like James Potter, had displayed more kindness and empathy to Severus than what James had ever been capable of. Harry, who is every bit his mother’s child, had been horrified from the very beginning of his father’s crimes, and had wept for Severus and for his mother for the cruelty the had both underwent at the hands of James Potter. Had told Severus with more maturity than most adults that Severus was justified in his anger, that Severus was more of a man and accomplished more in his life than Potter ever had and that Harry for one, was proud of Severus.

Harry, the boy who, like his mother before him, called Severus friend.

And Albus had wanted to kill him!

Severus had thought that he had hidden his epiphany well, for he had desired to shield Harry from another shock. It had been bad enough when Longbottom had been rescued, coming back shaken and with a harrowing tale told between bouts of uncontrollable sobbing. Harry had been a complete wreck, falling ill from the horrible realization, and it was all Severus could do to ensure Harry held down his food and that the boy absolutely did not throttle anyone stupid enough to blame Longbottom for the demise of the elderly fool.

Several others of the Order were no help. They had convinced themselves that Albus had surely had far more noble reasons for desiring to go into that cave... he had just done it irresponsibly! Is all. Miscalculated. Perhaps he had even been… depressed as of late.

But certainly not homicidal.

Harry disagreed, given that not even Harry’s magical skill would have been able to fight off a horde of inferi in an enclosed space that was half underwater. The boy was frightened enough, he needn’t have to endure another shock with knowing that Albus had planned to utilize his influence in order to force his demise even from beyond the grave by having someone loyal to Albus (Severus, he had wanted Severus to murder the boy) to ensure it happened.

Then one day, years afterward, Harry returned home late to Severus after having a good long think and several discussions with Ronald.

Harry greets Severus with his customary kiss to the cheek, but his lips are cold and his body is shaking, causing Severus to look up in alarm.

“Miss Skeeter told me that she found evidence that the Warlock had an obsession with trying to figure out what would happen if someone became the Master of Death.” Harry tells him in a shaking hoarse voice.

Severus’s stomach dropped.

“Oh?”

“I told her that the Warlock had the Elder wand and the Potter family’s invisibility cloak amongst his possessions, and that we found plenty of magical rings but none of them had shown us visions of dead relatives.”

“Did you?”

“I also said that the wand’s powers made my feet itch so badly that I had become overwhelmed, perhaps even possessed with the uncontrollable urge to snap it just to get it to stop and that I had to be restrained and taken out of the room. I told her that I was told that someone with Unspeakable connections had agreed to hide the wand in the Department of Mysteries by misfiling it as a different artifact entirely. I may have implied that it had been put inside a filing cabinet or in a desk drawer somewhere.”

“Thank you.”

“Your welcome.”

“They shall likely be turning the whole department upside-down come tomorrow.”

“It’ll be good for them. Give the place a good cleaning.”

“Indeed it shall. Put the quilt over your back love your teeth are chattering.” Severus quickly flicks his wand in order to summon said quilt off of the back of their comfortable napping couch and bundle Harry up in it.

“Did the Warlock want me to put on that ring? To welcome death willingly like in the story except with me still being very young and not an old man?” Harry rushes out, making Severus sigh.

“Remember the copy of your prophecy we had found hidden within his belongings?”

“…He wanted the bad guy to live?”

“More that he did not think it was possible to destroy the Dark Lord unless you sacrificed yourself. He had thought… it had been destiny that you both perish.”

“But you tested me. Whatever was in me was long gone by then.” Harry argues, his eyes tearing up. “I was free!”

“Yet you had still been touched by the Dark Lord’s power, the effects of which were unknown to him. He did not want to risk it.”

Harry looks sick. “So he thought I was… _tainted_? Not worth saving because I was damaged goods and not pure enough for him? That I had to be killed in order to be cleansed of… what? Some imaginary bogeyman that only he feared might exist?”

Severus rubs the lad’s arms and leads him to sit on the ottoman by Severus’s knees. “I think by that point in time he had lost the plot on reality. Nothing had gone according to his plans, even after his death whatever he had been planning simply did not transpire. Life, as you have often said, got in the way.”

“Do you think he wanted someone to figure it out and assassinate me in his honor?”

“No.” That had been his initial assumption as well but it was not Albus’s style, he would have wanted Severus to lead the boy to his death but in the end he would have desired that Harry take his own life. Murder would have made Albus feel guilty, suicide was something that could never be tied back to him.

“He likely desired you to search for what happened to Longbottom, or for Longbottom to accuse you of being a coward, both leading you upon a path that would be plagued by your feelings of guilt for not being as Gryffindor as your father, then have the Dark Lord rise and for you to follow his utterly baffling clues unto the conclusion that you must destroy yourself of your own free will and allow Longbottom to rise up as Albus’s secret weapon and slay the Dark Lord.” Replies Severus, it had taken him quite some time to puzzle that out but the way he favored both boys equally was significant, for Albus generally did not pay any attention to the meek.

And Longbottom was a very meek gentle child. Under normal circumstances Albus would not have cared if the meek boy was bullied or not, nor would he have likely thought Longbottom destined for anything worth being of note by Albus’s high testosterone aggressive Gryffindor standards.

“So… a fairytale.” Harry’s voice cracks. “The halfling dies and the one with true noble pure lineage succeeds as the true hero.”

“More of a Greek play, or an poem epic of old. Albus was always very much into bringing symbolism into everything.”

“He destroyed Neville with that stunt. He came out of it worse than before.” Harry’s voice is thick with pain. “He never recovered.”

“But surrounded by friends who were there to ensure he was safe and always looked after, particularly after his miserable excuse for a grandmother made it impossible for him to ever go home for the summers.” One of the muggleborn Slytherins had actually started it by offering to take the boy in, and the Gryffindors, not to be outdone, had all followed in offering to bring Longbottom home for the summer. Eventually Granger, a Ravenclaw and proud of it, had won by pointing out that Augusta Longbottom hated muggles and it would be the height of irony if he was looked after by not only muggles, but from one muggle who was related to a samurai, and another who had wrestled with a crocodile and there was photographic evidence to prove it.

“The closest I have ever come to falling in love with a woman since your mother had been the day Mrs. Granger insisted upon coming in personally and expressly stated that Longbottom was unfit to continue potions class and had done all the work needed to make such a reality come true.” Severus confides to try to distract Harry from his scare, it is not even a lie. After winter hols the smartly dressed Asian woman had arrived at the front Hogwarts gates and bullied her way to his office to present Severus with the first slice of good news he had heard in weeks.

Harry gives him a _look_. Still shaking a little but distracted enough that the quivers wracking his body lessen. “She did that because Nev suffered from nerve damage because his uncle is a violent creep.”

“She even kindly offered to take him away to Japan.” Oh if only Minerva had not stopped her.

“Threatened sweetie. She threatened to arrange for him to stay with her relatives if someone didn’t do something about his health problems.”

“If only Minerva had been in the mood to force her hand.” Severus sighs, teasing Harry. Of course Minerva would have naturally gone on a warpath for her lions regardless of her mood. Once Mrs. Granger set out the evidence Minerva had hit the roof, leaving school for several hours before coming back a little scratched up but looking terrifyingly self-satisfied.

Severus wisely chose not to ask.

Nor point out that she had never gone to such trouble for Harry despite clearly loving the boy far more than she did Longbottom. Severus wondered what Albus had done to keep her from rescuing the boy all of those years ago, she proved in the weeks _after_ Albus’s demise that she was capable of going to great lengths to protect the children under their care regardless of their house affiliations, and yet…

But alas, Albus left behind no means to create a portrait with his memories imbued into the canvas. Even if he had Severus doubted the man would willingly confess to using magic or abusive manipulations to keep Minerva on a short leash.

Severus knew what the man had done to keep Severus at heel, but what of the rest of them? He asked the portraits of Headmasters past what they knew and while they all agreed that Albus had indeed done _something_ underhanded, they could not agree on whether it was simple charming manipulations or the calming potion he put in his lemon sherbets.

Severus contemplates that particular discovery as he holds a distraught Harry in his arms. It was innocent enough for Albus to convince himself that he was not doing harm, yet Severus knew all too well how the human mind could be an easily fooled thing. Humans, as Harry often pointed out in a long-suffering way, no matter how secular they were, in their heart of hearts always desired the comfort of being able to believe in _something_. Whether that be a god, or a person, or a philosophical ideal, humans needed to put their faith into _something_ because humans have that pesky tendency to question everything, especially their own existence and their place in the universe as a whole, and such thoughts freak humans out as much as it intrigues them. The unknown is a frightening place so humans put their faith into _something_ eternal so that they can hold onto a stable constant when everything else is matter born from chaos.

Albus had seemed eternal, as did the Dark Lord. It made sense. They certainly always put on an air of being eternal. Severus had not even had the thought of Albus being capable of dying cross his mind until it had happened so suddenly. The Death Eaters self-destructed themselves in devastating grief when their Lord, the closest thing they had to a god king, had vanished completely. When Albus perished, under circumstances that, if _he had been anyone else_ , would have led to all of his honors to be stripped from him and immediate public damnation. Yet Albus’s image as a good man was largely preserved. Only slowly being corroded away as time marched forward and the masses came to terms with harsh reality.

Harry hated when people put so much faith into other human beings. A moderate amount was fine, such as the faith he put into Severus and his friends, but making humans out to be godlike never ended well when the crops did not yield and the rains did not come. It destroyed precious human connections and ended up hurting both the ones who were worshipped as well as the worshippers themselves.

Ginevra was a good example of this as far as Harry went. Eventually she had grown out of it as she transitioned into adulthood and was thus able to form healthier romantic interests that were not surrounded by an ideal of her perfect imaginary boyfriend that she had once wanted Harry to emulate. She is terrifically ashamed by her teenaged self’s past actions and if the topic is mentioned she will curl up into a ball of utter mortification and make horrified sounds into pillows at the memories it will bring up.

Harry by contrast still had a few cursed scars to remember the whole thing by so Severus wasn’t very sympathetic to her plight.

Even less so because Albus had been convinced that it had been cute and not destructive or creepy. To Albus love was defined by obsession and possession, of unequal worship and dynamics that sounded like a fairytale on paper even though it never worked in reality. Albus only saw a redheaded Purebred who could be a stand-in for Lily courting the son of James Potter whom Albus swore was like James reborn. In Albus’s decaying mind it was the perfect match of history repeating itself as if, somehow, James and Lily’s souls had been reborn so they were, in a sense, not dead to Albus’s mind. Lightening the guilt he had felt over them dying wandless and without the invisibility cloak because Lily had been threatening to take Harry away with her to America where the Potters had safe places for them to stay, and Albus could not resist the desire to own another Hallow, so he had taken their only protections away from them. To control Lily and remind her about whom she now belonged to (whether it had been to James or as the token muggleborn, **_The Only Muggleborn_** , to Albus’s collection in the Order Severus did not know).

Even better was the fact that Ginevra is Purebred and Albus had hopes that she could tame Harry’s non-wizarding tendencies and fully embrace his Potter heritage. Save the Potter line, and breed little inbred spawn that would take after their father’s looks but be proper wizards like their mother.

To which Harry called Albus out for being a racist sonofabitch and demanded where the hell his own mother’s Welsh heritage (for the Evans family had moved to Cokesworth from Wales) factored into this or why the old pervert was so fascinated by incest between siblings who were genetically pretty close to being first cousins or even closer in blood relation since Harry had done some digging and there was a chance that a witch in the recent Potter or Evans family trees had nonmarital relations with a Weasley or a close relative of a Weasley. Besides that Harry is gay! Why was that so difficult for people to understand? Dumbledore admitted to being gay, he didn’t go out and impregnate any witches to save the Dumbledore family line, _what the hell is your obsession with who I will or will never even under torture, would ever shag in my private life you creepy old pervert? You are not even my family!_

Albus’s accidental slips where his… less than politically correct views on people who were not English Purebreds only became particularly apparent (to some people, Harry often claimed that the man had a habit of slipping up in front of him and Hermione because they were foreign and not white and therefore _knew_ , because they had far too much exposure to that very special brand of low key British racism, that the old white fart’s offhand subtle comments were _absolutely not just in their imaginations_ ) after the man’s death and they had gained access to Albus’s things. It had been… quite unsettling to his half-blood collogues, even if he was still incredibly radical by traditionalist standards. He did not even have a kind thing to say in his will to Aberforth, his squib brother. Only a declaration of pity of his non-magical status underlined with shocking petty undertones of how Albus was giving the man a clear handout by gifting him Albus’s money.

Also he willed Godrick’s Hollow to Harry _“for his future wife and numerous children, or if he is still so inclined even after becoming fully aware of the devotion of a certain someone who loves him just as his mother had loved his father, then a future husband shall have to suffice”_ to which everyone especially Arthur was grateful that Harry had refused to attend the reading of the will and had instead stayed at home to help Molly with making everyone food. Because they all knew that Harry’s response would be to burn the place down to the foundations. He had made a face at the news that he had been given the location of his very earliest and worst memory, when all of the murder had happened, but he had not burned it to the ground. Instead he arranged with the goblins to completely remodel the place and put up an illusion out front so that the wizards could keep their morbid memorial, then declared to all of his family and friends that if they ever needed someplace free to live in the creepy murder cottage was all theirs. To which, in the ensuing silence after that announcement, Charles Weasley was the only one insane enough to call dibs, and he stayed there instead of at the crowded Burrow for visits home.

To Albus’s mind, and the minds of many traditionalist Purebloods, it had been incredibly kind to acknowledge the squib relative at all. The height of acceptance for the “better” brother to take pity on his defective one. To everyone else it had sounded like a post-mortem slap to the face, shockingly rude even considering that Albus was supposed to be on the side of the light which desired to protect the rights of squibs, muggleborns, and muggles. To sound so dismissive as well as disturbingly Purebred elitist was confusing for many to say the least, while those of the most traditionalist of factions breathed a sigh of relief that he had at least the good taste not to be terribly outrageous in his will, or were even confused as to why so many people had gotten upset since the will sounded normal enough. For a staunchly traditionalist Pureblood at least. The whole deal with the Dark Lord rising, they all felt, was in bad taste, and it did cause some alarm, but Severus had been quick to head anything off by sending an official statement to Skeeter that the thing that had led to Albus making that assumption had turned out to be a false alarm. Just a sad, desperate Death Eater who had tried to impersonate his former master in order to lure Albus out and kill him in revenge for the Light winning.

Aberforth rolled his eyes at them all during the private wake they held for only close family and those inside of Albus’s innermost of inner circles (which included Harry but he politely refused to attend this as well given the circumstances), when the other half-bloods and more savvy Purebloods were treating him with kid gloves.

_“That Skeeter woman weren’t pulling it out of her arse that Albus fell into a bad crowd when he were young. That Gindelwald boy ‘ad been older than ‘im in Hogwarts, much more posh, an’ he knew jest what to do to wrap Al ‘round his little finger. With ma and paw gone, our baby sister never recoverin’, an’ ‘im bein’ resentful at the world in general. He refused t’ think wit ‘is head. Muggles, the Aurars claimed ‘ad attacked Ariana, who ‘ad been a powerful witch at a young age, an’ more than capable of usin’ accidental magic to protect ‘erslf. Then when paw had gone off to prison the Aurars ‘ad tol’ him that he’d broken the law by goin’ after those muggle boys even though paw was built like a bear an’ a good enough fighter t’ not need a wand to go after some little muggle shits. Al had been at school, he weren’t around to know the truth of it, an’ he be so enamored by Grindelwald that he refused t’ listen t’ any of us when we tol’ ‘im that it had been Purebreds of high enough standin’ t’ bribe the coppers inta doin’ nothin’. When ma grew too vocal an’ word of it reached back to Grindelwald through Al there had been an explosion alright, one that Ariana was nowhere near might I add. The message was made clear: do not keep making a fuss or we will kill you too. Albus were in school durin’ all of this, so he never knew nor believed ‘is born wrong Squib brother or ‘is ill sister. Not when the alternative were to believe the love of ‘is life Grindelwald were connected ‘t it all. Not when he ‘ad been so charmed that ‘e ‘ad wanted t’ act jest like them high up types in the Purebred crowd an’ turn ‘is back on ‘is muggle heritage. It were Ariana bein’ killed during a lovers spat between Grindelwald an’ he that drove Albus to distance ‘imself from all ‘e ‘ad stood fer. Yet the attitudes still clung ‘t him for ‘e never ‘ad left that life fer actual belief but fer a broken heart at bein’ betrayed by ‘is childhood lover. Over time ‘e convinced ‘imself that there had been no warning of what Grindelwald was, that ‘e’d ‘ad somethin’ genuine an’ innocent that did not develop int’ anythin’ sinister with that monster until much later. Better fer ‘im t’ believe that instead of the reality of bein’ targeted by the son of a family with radical ties t’ a terrorist Purebred gang specifically b’cause of paw’s politics an’ paw marryin’ down t’ a muggleborn from a famer’s family. Better t’ blame muggles fer everything ‘avin’ t’ do with Ariana an’ paw an’ look down on ‘em for bein’ uneducated savages. Better t’ believe Aurars who known Grindelwald by first names than ‘is own sister’s innocence. Better t’ blame ‘is Squib brother who raised and schooled Ariana when she couldn’t go t’ Hogwarts fer the trauma. Albus never forgave ‘imself fer turning his back on ‘is family, I’ll give ‘im that much. ‘E did try, in ‘is own ways t’ not be like Grindelwald, but, an’ this’ll shock you all I’m sure, it weren’t ever because ‘e really believed. ‘E tried, but as you all ‘ave come to realize ‘e weren’t ever very good at knowin’ ‘ow. It were because ‘e devoted the rest of his life t’ tryin’ not t’ let Grindelwald’s attempts to transform Albus int’ a monster win out. …’E was not entirely successful toward the end ‘m afraid… Tol’ ‘imself one too many of ‘is own stories an’ like in the past ‘e wasn’t able t’ see that ‘e wasn’t all alone an’ ‘ad people who cared about ‘im, an’ worried about ‘im. ‘E never could shake off them notions that it was ‘im alone against the cruel an’ evil world thing that Grindelwald boy drilled inta ‘is brain. If ‘e ‘ad then ‘e’d at least ‘ave been around t’ ‘ave known that I’m wealthy enough t’ not need ‘is money let alone want it given I’d rather ‘ave ‘ad ‘im alive an’ safe, an’ not playin’ around wit’ dem inferi as if it were all a game! Why Black hoisted the Headmastery unto ‘im I dun know, a mastermind ‘e may ‘ave been but ‘e ‘ated paperwork, could never sit still fer more than two minutes, an’ when Ariana was still with us I ended up bein’ the one t’ raise ‘er b’cause ‘e kept leaving ‘er on ‘er lonesome while ‘e was always runnin’ off to be alone with ‘is boyfriend who was the reason fer her obscurus condition in the first place. I’m sorry Minerva but tis the truth. ‘E was never child friendly.”_

Neither was Severus but even he had to admit that the thought of Albus caring for and raising a child was… oddly an impossible thing for him to imagine given that Albus was mostly gone to attend to his Head Warlock duties or messing with the heads of politicians or going off on some obscure quest or a vacation. After assuming the Headmaster role Severus had to hire Percival in secret to avoid the Ministry getting involved just to untangle the massive mess that was all of the paperwork Albus had charmed his way out of having to do, the wards had never been updated since Albus had taken on the job and they were in dire disrepair, Binns had to be kicked out and an actual teacher hired, the curriculum that had never been updated needed radical updating, the fact that there used to be a position for a second on-site Potions Master that worked solely for the infirmary and castle needs but Albus had lied to him and said that it had been all part of the professorship role and Severus never got paid a sickle for the added labor!

…Then there was how he had treated Harry. A mean bitter man Severus was, but at the very least Severus could boast that he protected the children as best he could. That he did his job. That he actually found it in his shriveled black heart to look after his charges in a way that would see them excel in the future if the children were willing to meet him halfway and do their work and stay out of trouble.

It had been a very odd thing comparing himself to Albus with the knowledge of what the old man had wanted Severus to do and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that Severus… for all of his sins, was still somehow nowhere near the sort of monster who would murder anyone. Especially not a child.

Especially, never even contemplate the notion of killing Harry.

Albus had been so charming and for as long as Severus could remember he had seemed so… untouchable. Too pure for the world.

Not so. In death Albus could no longer use his charm to hide a truth that painted an entirely bloodstained dark portrait of the man Severus had once thought of as his master. Perhaps not Dark Lord levels of darkness, but evil nonetheless. The sort of evil that would have had a teenaged fifteen-year-old Longbottom share the same frightening fate as Albus, without giving the boy a choice to say no or to even begin to think that a child could not give consent to doing things that only adults should be responsible for.

And he had the audacity to expect Severus to allow Lily’s son to perish over something so-… immeasurably pointless. A horrific cruel and painful death…

Severus sighs, rubbing his lover’s back. “He had lost the plot luv. Without the Dark Lord rising back into power he had lost his own sense of purpose and feared dying an old man in bed rather than out with a sense of glory. Nothing more than a sad old man who chose his own tragic fate and overestimated his own importance to you in the event of his death. Someone to be pitied but left to rest with his impossible goals left forgotten.”

“Ron says that if he’d have been anybody else he’d have ended up in Mungo’s senior citizen ward for those who can’t take care of themselves.”

“Correct.”

“…Is that why he did it? He knew he was getting too old?”

“No. He was too overcome with madness to be thinking of such mortal concerns.”

“Why did he want to take me with him? Into the afterlife I mean.”

“To prove that he was right and make it impossible for you to prove him wrong. You know how much of a Gryffindor he was, his pride was on the line, as was his legacy. Desperate men have stooped lower for less.”

“I think it scares me the most that he had been able to get away with it and it was only after he died and couldn’t talk anymore that he stopped being able to get away with stuff.” Harry admits, which leads Severus back to his earlier thoughts concerning how Albus had managed to convince so many people to do his bidding who would not normally be prone to standing by and doing nothing.

“I do not think that the Dark Lord was the only one who did not know of what it meant to love someone.” Severus says, thinking that the statement went far deeper than what Harry needed to ever know. Albus was scary enough for Harry, no need to add to that fear.

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to try out an AU where magic wasn't actually limited to a scant few humans and all things magical were (somehow, impossibly) kept a secret, and that the magical Ministry in London wasn't the only magical community in the British Isles. I think the Harry Potter books would make more sense if a certain group of xenophobic elite Purebred wizards like to pretend that magic doesn't exist without their say so but the reality is much more complicated.


End file.
